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PROTESTANT "REFORMATION," 



ENGLAND AND IRELAND 



SHOWING HOW THAT EVENT HAS IMPOVERISHED AND DEGRADED THK 
MAIN" BODY OF THE PEOPLE IN THOSE COUNTRIES. 



Iff A SERIES OF LETTERS, 



ADDRESSED TO ALL SENSIBLE AND JUST ENGLISHMEN. 



BY WILLIAM COBBETT. 



TO WHICH IS ADDED, HIS LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODAN, 
ON THE SUBJECT OF RELIGION. 



FOURTH EDITION 



BALTIMORE: 

PUBLISHED BY JAMES MYRES, 

AT THE CATHEDRAE. 

^ 1826. 



Matchett, printer. 



rt5 

3 



*$ 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER I. 

PAGE. 

Introduction, 3 

LETTER IL 

Origin of the Catholic Church — History of the Church in 
England, down to the u Reformation'' — Beginning of the 

" Reformation" by Henry VIII 22 

LETTER III. 

Resistance to the King's Pleasures — Effects of abolishing 
the Pope's Supremacy — Death of Sir Thomas More and 
Bishop Fisher — Horrible Murders of Catholics— Luther 
and the New Religion — Burning of Catholics and Pro- 
testants at the same fire — Execrable conduct of Cranmer 
—Title of Defender of the Faith, ......... 43 

LETTER IV. 

Horrid Tyranny— Butchery of the Countess of Salisbury — 
Celibacy of the Clergy — Bishops of Winchester — Hume's 

Charges and Bishop Tanner's Answer, 65 

LETTER V 

Authorities relating to the effects of the Monastic Institu- 
tions — Their great utility, and the political wisdom in 
which they were founded— The appointment of the ruf- 
fian Thomas Cromwell — His proceedings in the work of 
Plunder and Devastation— The first Act of Parliament 

authorizing the Plunder, . • 86 

LETTER VI 

Confiscation of the Monasteries— Base and Cruel Means of 
doing this— The Sacking and Defacing of the Country- 
Breaking up the Tomb of Alfred— More Wives Divorced 
and Killed— Death of the Miscreant Cromwell— Death of 

the Tyrant himself, *°4 

LETTER VII 

Edward V- Crowned — Perjury of the Executors of Henry 
VIII— New Church 'By Law Established"— Robbery 
of the Churches — Insurrections of the People— Treasons 
of Cranmer and his Associates — Death of the King, • • 12f 
LETTER VIII 

Mary's Accession to the Throne — Her mild and benevo- 
lent Laws — The Nation Reconciled to the Church — The 
Queen's great generosity and piety — Her marriage with 

Philip— Fox's " Martyrs," 150 

LETTER IX. 

Mary at War with France — The Capture of Calais by the 
French — The Death of Queen Mary — Accession of Queen 
Elizabeth — Her cruel and bloody Laws relative to Reli- 
gion — Her Perfidy with regard to France — The Disgrace 
she brought upon her Government and the country by 
this Perfidy — Her base and perpetual Surrender of Calais, 176 



11. CONTENTS. 

LETTER X. 

Massacre of Saint Bartholomew — Tail-Piece to it — A man's 
hand cut off for thwarting Bess in her Love sick Fit — 
Her Favourites and Ministers — History and Murder of 
Mary, Queen of Scotland. 19? 

LETTER XI. 

Bess's Hypocrisy as to the Death of Mary Stuart — Spanish 
Armada — Poor-La ws — Barbarous Treatment of Ireland 
—Bess's Inquisition — Horrid Persecution of the Catho- 
lics — The Racks and Tortures she employed — Her Death, 219 

LETTER XII 

Accession of James I. — Horrid persecution of the Catho- 
lics — Gunpowder Plot — Charles I. qualified for the rank 
of Martyr — " Reformation" the second, or " Thorough 
Godly Reformation"- — Charles n. The plots and in- 
gratitude of his Reign — James II. His endeavours to 
introduce general toleration — Dawn of " Glorious" 
Revolution, 240 

LETTER XIII. 

" Glorious" Revolution, or Reformation the Third — The 
Dutch King and his delivering Army — The " Crimes of 
James II. with Elucidations — Parliamentary Purity — The 
Protestant Bishop Jocelyn — Sydney, and others of the 
Protestant Patriots — Habeas Corpus Act — Settlement of 
American Colonies, 260 

LETTER XIV. 

William's Triumph over James and the Catholics — A "No- 
Popery" War requires Money to carry it on — Burnet's 
Scheme on borrowing and Funding — Origin of Banks 
and Bank Notes — Heavy Taxes, Excise, Septennial Bill 
— Attempt to Tax the Americans — Americans Revolt in 
the face of the Doctrines of Blackstone — Their Charges 
against George HI., 279 

LETTER XV. 

American "Reformation" brought relief to Catholics — 
Persecutions up to Reign of James II. Law-Church 
opposes Liberty of Conscience — Horrible Penal Code — 
Softened, at last, from motives of Fear — French Revolu- 
tion produces a second softening of the Code — Penal 
Code, as it now stands — Result of the " Reformation" as 
far as relates to Religion, 299 

LETTER XVI. 

Former Population of England and Ireland — Former 
Wealth — Former Power — Former Freedom — Former 
Plenty, Ease, and Happiness, ...'.. 316 

LETTER XVII 

Extra Letter, addressed to the Parsons of the Establish- 
ed Church, 342 

Letter to the Earl of Roden, 365 



aSffiH! 1 ®^ 



YROTESTAKT U REF0IIMAT\02V' 



LETTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Kensington, 29th November, 1824. 

MY FRIENDS, 

1. We have recently seen a rescript from the king 
to the bishops, the object of which was to cause them 
to call upon their clergy, to cause collections of mo- 
ney to be made in the several parishes throughout Eng- 
land, for the purpose of promoting what is called the 
u religious education" of the people. The bishops, in 
conveying their instructions, on this subject, to their 
clergy, direct them to send the money thus collected 
to a Mr. Joshua Watson, in London, who, it seems, 
is the treasurer of this religious education concern, and 
who is, or lately was, a wine and spirit dealer, in Min- 
cing-lane, Fenchurch-street. This same Mr. Wat- 
son is also the head man of a society, called the " So- 
ciety for promoting Christian Knowledge?'' The pre- 
sent Bishop of Winchester, in his first charge to the 
Clergy of his diocese, says, that this society is the 
" correct expounder of evangelical truth, and jinn sup- 
porter of the Established Church ;" and he accordingly 
strongly recommends, that the publications put forth 
by this society, be put into the hands of the scholars of 
those schools, to promote which, the above-mention- 
ed collections were made by royal authority, 

2. We shall, further on, have an opportunity of ask- 
ing what sort of a Clergy this must be, who, while they 



4 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

swallow, in England and Ireland, about eight millions 
a year, call, upon their parishioners for money to be 
sent to a wine and spirit merchant, that he may cause 
the children of the country to have a " religious educa- 
tion.'''' But, not to stop, at present, for this purpose, 
pray observe, my friends, that this society for " pro- 
moting Christian knowledge" is continually putting 
forth publications, the object of which is to make the 
people of England believe, that the Catholic religion is 
" idolatrous u.nd damnable;" and that, of course, the 
one-third part of the whole of our fellow-subjects are 
idolaters, and are destined to eternal perdition, and that 
they, of course, ought not to enjoy the same rights that 
we Protestants enjoy. These calumniators know well, 
that this same Catholic religion was, for nine hundred 
years, the only Christian religion known to our fore- 
fathers. This is a fact which they cannot disguise from 
intelligent persons; and, therefore, they, like the Pro- 
testant Clergy, are constantly applauding the change 
which took place about two hundred years ago, and 
which change goes by the name of the REFORMA- 
TION. 

3. Before we proceed further, let us clearly under- 
stand the meaning of these words: — Catholic, Pro- 
testant, and Reformation. Catholic means uni- 
versal, and the religion, which takes this epithet, was 
called universal, because all Christian people of every 
nation acknowledge it to be the only true religion, and 
because they all acknowledge one and the same head of 
Ihe Church, and this was the Pope, who, though he 
generally resided at Rome, was the head of the Church 
in England, in France, in Spain, and, in short, in every 
part of the world where the Christian religion was pro- 
fessed. But, there came a time, when some nations, 
or, rather, parts of some nations, cast off the authority 
of the Pope, and, of course, no longer acknowledged 
him as the head of the Christian Church. These na- 
tions, or parts of nations, declared, or protested, against 
the authority of their former head, and also against the 
doctrines of that church, which, until now, had been 
the only Christian Church. They, therefore, called 
themselves Protestors, or Protestants; and this is 






INTRODUCTION. 5 

now the appellation given to all who are not Catholics. 
As to the word Reformation, it means, an alteration 
for the better; and it would have been hard indeed if 
the makers of this great alteration could not have con- 
trived to give it a good name. 

4. Now, my friends, a fair and honest inquiry will 
teach us, that this was an alteration greatly for the 
worse ; that the " Reformation," as it is called, was 
engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy 
and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devas- 
tation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish 
blood; and that, as to its more remote consequences, 
they are, some of them, now before us, in that misery, 
that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that ever- 
lasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us in the 
face and stun our ears at every turn, and which the 
" Reformation" has given us in exchange for the ease 
and happiness and harmony and Christian charity, en- 
joyed so abundantly, and for so many ages, by our 
Catholic forefathers. 

5. Were there, for the entering on this inquiry no 
motive other than that of a bare love of justice, that mo- 
tive alone, would, I hope, be sufficient with the far 
greater part of Englishmen. But, besides this abstract 
motive, there is another of great and pressing practical 
importance. A full third part of our fellow-subjects 
are still Catholics; and when we consider, that the 
principles of the "Reformation" are put forward as the 
ground for excluding them from their civil rights, and 
also as the ground for treating them in a manner the 
most scornful, despiteful, and cruel; when we consider, 
that it is not in human nature for men to endure such 
treatment, without wishing for, and without seeking, 
opportunities for taking vengeance ; when we consider 
the present formidable attitude of foreign nations, natu- 
rally our foes, and how necessary it is that we should 
all be cordially united, in order to preserve the inde- 
pendence of our country; when we consider, that such 
union is utterly impossible as long as one-third part of 
the people are treated as outcasts, because, and only 
because, they have, in spite of two hundred years of 
persecutions unparalleled, adhered to the religion of 

1* 



6 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

their and of our fathers: when we consider these 
things, that fair and honest inquiry, on which a bare 
love of justice might well induce us to enter, presses 
itself upon us as a duty which we owe to ourselves, our 
children and our country. 

6. If you will follow me in this inquiry, I will first 
show you how this thing called the " Reformation" be- 
gan ; what it arose out of; and then I will show you its 
progress, how it marched on, plundering, devastating, 
inflicting torments on the people, and shedding their 
innocent blood. I will trace it downward through all 
its stages, until I show you its natural result, in the 
schemes of Parson Malthus, in the Oundle-Plan of 
Lord John Russell's recommending, in the present 
misery indescribable of the labouring classes in Eng- 
land and Ireland, and in that odious and detestable sys- 
tem, which has made Jews and paper-money makers the 
real owners of a large part of the estates in this king- 
dom. 

7. But, before I enter on this series of deeds and of 
consequences, it is necessary to offer you some observa- 
tions of a more general nature, and calculated to make 
us doubt, at least, of the truth of what we have heard 
against the Catholic religion. Our minds have been so 
completely filled with the abuse of this religion, that, 
at first, we can hardly bring ourselves to listen to any 
thing said in defence of it, or, in apology for it. Those 
whom you will, by and by, find in possession of the 
spoils of the Catholic Church, and, indeed, of those of 
the Catholic nobles and gentlemen, not forgetting those 
of the poor; these persons have always had the strong- 
est possible motive for causing the people to be brought 
up in the belief, that the Catholic religion was, and is, 
something to inspire us with horror. From our very 
infancy, on the knees of our mothers, we have been 
taught to believe, that to be a Catholic was to be a 
false, cruel, and bloody wretch; and " popery and 
slavery" have been wrung in our ears, till, whether 
we looked on the Catholics in their private or their 
public capacity, we have inevitably come to the conclu- 
sion that they were every thing that was vicious and 
vile. 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

8. But, you may say, why should any body, and par- 
ticularly our countrymen, take such pains to deceive us? 
Why should they, for so many years, take the trouble 
to write and publish books of all sizes, from big folios 
down to halfpenny tracts, in order to make us think ill 
of this Catholic religion? Now, my friends, take an in- 
stance in answer to this why. The immense property 
of the Catholic Church in Ireland, in which, mind, the 
poor had a share, was taken from the Catholics and 
given to the Protestant Bishops and Parsons. These 
have never been able to change the religion of the 
main body of the people of that country; and there 
these Bishops and Parsons are enjoying the immense 
revenues without having scarcely any flocks. This 
produces great discontents, makes the country continu- 
ally in a state of ferment, causes enormous expenses to 
England, and exposes the whole kingdom to great dan- 
ger in case of war. Now, if those who enjoy these re- 
venues, and their close connexions in this country, had 
not made us believe, that there was something very 
bad, wicked * and horrible in the Catholic religion, 
should we not, long ago, have asked why they put us to 
all this expense for keeping that religion down? They 
never told us, and they never tell us, that this Catholic 
religion was the only religion known to our own fore- 
fathers for nine hundred years. If they had told us this, 
we should have said, that it could not possibly have 
been so very bad a religion, and that it would be better 
to leave the Irish people still to enjoy it: and that, 
since there were scarcely any Protestant flocks, it 
would be better for us all, if the Church revenues were to 
go again to the original owners ' 

9. Ah ! my friends ! here we have the real motive for 
all the abuse, all the hideous calumnies that have been 
heaped upon the Catholic religion, and upon all that nu- 
merous body of our fellow-subjects who adhere to that 
ancient faith. When you think of the power of this mo- 
tive, you will not be surprised at the great and inces- 
sant pains that have been taken to deceive us. Even 
the Scripture itself has been perverted in order to 
blacken the Catholics. In books of all sizes, and from 
the pulpit of every church, we have been taught from 



8 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

our infancy, that the " beast, the man of sin, and the 
scarlet whore" mentioned in the Revelations, were names 
which God Aimse//had given to the Pope; and we have 
all been taught to believe of the Catholic Church, that 
her worship was " idolatrous" and that her doctrines 
were " damnable." 

10. Now, let us put a plain question or two to our- 
selves, and to these our teachers ; and w r e shall quickly be 
able to form a just estimate of the modesty, sincerity, and 
consistency of these revilers of the Catholic religion. — 
They will not, because they cannot, deny, that this reli- 
gion was the ONLY CHRISTIAN religion in the world 
for fifteen hundred years after the death of Christ. They 
may say, indeed, that for the first three hundred years 
there was no Pope seated at Rome. But, then, for 
twelve hundred years there had been ; and during that pe- 
riod, all the nations of Europe and some part of Ame- 
rica had become Christian, and all acknowledged the 
Pope as their head in religious matters ; and, in short, 
there was no other Christian Church known in the 
world, nor had any other ever been thought of. Can 
we believe, then, that Christ, who died to save sinners, 
who sent forth his gospel as the means of their salva- 
tion, would have suffered a false Christian religion, and 
no other than a false Christian religion, to be known 
amongst men all this while ? Will these modest assail- 
ants of the faith of their and our ancestors assert to our 
faces, that, for twelve hundred years at least, there were 
no true Christians in the world ? Will they tell us, that 
Christ, who promised to be with the teachers of his 
word to the end of the world, wholly left them, and gave 
up hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people to be led 
in darkness to their eternal perdition by one whom his in- 
spired followers had denominated the " man of sin and 
the scarlet whore ?" Will they, indeed, dare to tell us, 
that Christ gave up the world wholly to " Antichrist" for 
twelve hundred years? Yet this they must do; they 
must thus stand forward with bold and unblushing blas- 
phemy ; or they must confess themselves guilty of the 
most atrocious calumny against the Catholic religion. 

11. Then, coming nearer home, and closer to our 
own bosoms, our ancestors became Christians about six 



INTRODUCTION. V 

hundred years after the death of Christ. And how 
did they become Christians? Who first pronounced the 
name of Christ to this land? Who converted the En- 
glish from paganism to Christianity? Some Protestant 
saint, doubtless, warm from a victory like that of Skib- 
berreen? Oh, no ! The work was begun, continued 
and ended by the Popes, one of whom sent over some 
Monks, (of whom we shall see more by-and-by,) who 
settled at Canterbury, and from whose beginnings the 
Christian religion spread, like the grain of mustard-seed, 
rapidly over the land. Whatever, therefore, any other 
part of the world might have known of Christianity be- 
fore the Pope became the settled and acknowledged head 
of the Church, England, at any rate, never had known 
of any Christian religion other than that at the head of 
which was the Pope ; and in this religion, with the 
Pope at its head, England continued to be firmly fixed 
for nine hundred years. 

12. What, then : will our kind teachers tell us, that it 
was the " scarlet whore" and " Antichrist" who brought 
the glad tidings of the gospel into England? Will they 
tell us, too, that all the millions and hundreds of millions 
of English people, who died during those nine hundred 
years, expired without the smallest chance of salvation? 
Will they tell us that all our fathers, who first built our 
churches, and whose flesh and bones form the earth for 
many feet deep in all the church-yards ; will they tell us, 
that all these are now howling in the regions of the damn- 
ed? Nature beats at our bosom, and bids us shudder at 
the impious, the horrid thought! Yet, this, even this, 
these presumptuous men must tell us ; or they must con- 
fess their base calumny, in calling the Pope ''Antichrist," 
and the Catholic worship " idolatrous" and its doctrines 
" damnable." 

1 3. But coming to the present time, the days in which 
we ourselves live; if we look round the world, we shall 
find that now, even now, about nine-tenths of all those 
who profess to be Christians are Catholics. What then; 
has Christ suffered " Antichrist" to reign almost wholly 
uninterrupted even unto this day? Has Christ made the 
Protestant Church? Did he suggest the " Reforma- 
tion?" And does he, after all, then suffer the followers 



20 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

of " Antichrist" to out-number his own followers nine 
to one ? But, in this view of the matter, how lucky have 
been the Clergy of our Protestant Church, established 
by law ! Her flock does not, if fairly counted, contain 
one-five-hundredth-part of the number of those who are 
Catholics ; while, observe, her Clergy receive more, 
not only than all the Clergy of all the Catholic nations, 
but more than all the Clergy of all the Christian people 
in the world, Catholics and Protestants all put together! 
She calls herself a Church "by law established.'' She 
never omits this part of her title. She calls herself 
"holy," "godly" and a good deal besides. She calls her 
ministers " reverend" and her worship and doctrines 
" evangelical." She talks very much about her reliance 
for support upon her "founder" (as she calls him,) 
Christ; but, in stating her claims and her qualities, she 
never fails to conclude with, " by LAW established." 
This '.' law," however, sometimes wants the bayonet to 
enforce it; and her tithes are not unfrequently collected 
by the help of soldiers, under the command of her minis- 
ters, whom the law has made Justices of the Peace! 

14. To return; are we to believe, then, that Christ 
has, even unto this day, abandoned nine~tenths of the 
people of Europe to " Antichrist?" Are we to believe, 
that, if this " to-established" religion had been the reli- 
gion of Christ, and the Catholic religion that of " Anti- 
christ : if this had been the case, are we to believe, that 
the "law-established" religion, that our " holy religion," 
as George Rose used to call it, while his grasping paw 
was deep in our purses ; if this had been the case, are we 
to believe that the "law-established" religion, that the 
"holy religion" of John Bowles the Dutch Commissioner; 
are we to believe, that that " holy religion," (the fruits of 
which we behold in those worthy sons of the church, 
Vital Christianity and Jocelyn Roden,) would, at 
the end of two hundred years, have been able to count 
only one member for about every five hundred members, 
(taking all Christendom together,) of that Church against 
which the "law" Church protested and still protests? 

15. Away, then, my friends, with this foul abuse of 
the Catholic religion, which, after all, is the religion of 
about nine-tenths of all the Christians in the world !— 



INTRODUCTION. 1 1 

Away with this shameful calumny, the sole object of 
which is, and always has been, to secure a quiet pos- 
session of the spoils of the Catholic Church, and of the 
poor; for, we shall, by-and-by, clearly see how the poor 
■were despoiled at the same time that the Church was. 

16. But, there remains to be noticed, in this place, 
an instance or two of the consistency of these revilers 
of the Catholic Church and faith. We shall, in due 
time, see how the Protestants, the moment they began 
their " Reformation" were split up into dozens and 
scores of sects, each condemning the other to eternal 
flames. But I will here speak only of the " Church of 
England," as it is called, " by Zaw-established." Now, 
we know very well, that we, who belong to this Protest- 
ant Church, believe or profess to believe, that the New 
Testament, as printed and distributed amongst us, 
contains the true and genuine "word oj God:" that it 
contains the "ivords of eternal life;" that it points out 
to us the means, and the only means, by which we can 
possibly be saved from everlasting fire. This is what 
we believe. Now, how did we come by this New Testa- 
ment? Who gave us this real and genuine " word of 
God?" From whom did we receive these " words of 
eternal life?" Come Joshua Watson, wine and spirit 
merchant, and teacher of religion to the people of En- 
gland : come, Joshua, answer these questions ? They 
are questions of great importance ; because, if this be 
the book, and the only book, which contains instructions 
relative to the means of saving our souls, it is manifest, 
that it is a matter of deep interest to us, who it was that 
this book came from to us, through what channel we re- 
ceived it, and what proof we have of its authenticity. 

17. Oh! Joshua Watson ! Alas! wine and spirit mer- 
chant, who art at the head of a Society, "for promot- 
ing Christian Knowledge," which Society the Bishop 
of Winchester calls the "correct expounder of evangeli- 
cal truth, and the firm supporter" of the Zatc-established 
Church : Oh! Joshua, teacher of religion to the people 
of England, who pay six or eight millions a-year to the 
Parsons who employ thee to do this teaching: Oh! Jo- 
shua, what a shocking thing it is, that we Protestants 
should have received this New Testament ; this real 



12 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

and genuine "word of God;" these "words of eternal 
life;" this book that points out to us the means, and the 
only means of salvation: what a shocking fact, that we 
should have received this book from that Pope and that 
Catholic Church, to make us believe that the first of 
whom is the Whore of Babylon, and that the worship 
of the last is idolatrous and her doctrines damnable, you 
Joshua, and your Society for " promoting Christian 
Knowledge," are now, at this very moment, publishing 
and pushing into circulation no less than seventeen differ- 
ent books and tracts ! 

1 8. After the death of Christ, there was a long space 
of time before the gospel was put into any thing like its 
present shape. It was preached in several countries, and 
churches were established in those countries, long be- 
fore the written gospel was known much of, or, at least, 
long before it was made use of as a guide to the Chris- 
tian Churches. At the end of about four hundred years, 
the written gospels were laid before a council of the 
Catholic Church, of which the Pope was the head. But, 
there were several gospels besides those of Matthew, 
Mark, Luke and John ! Several other of the apostles, 
or early disciples, had written gospels. All these, long af- 
ter the death of the authors, were, as I have just said, 
laid before a council of the Catholic Church ; and that 
council determined which of the gospels were genuine and 
which not. It retained the four gospels of Matthew, 
Mark, Luke and John ; it determined that these four 
should be received and believed in, and that all the rest 
should be rejected. 

1 9. So that here Joshua Watson's Society is without 
any other gospel ; without any other word of God ; with- 
out any guide to eternal life ; without any other than that 
which that Society, as well as all the rest of us, have 
received from a church, which that Society calls u idol- 
atrous" and the head of which it calls " the beast , the 
man of sin, the scarlet w hore, and Antichrist /" To a 
pretty state, then, do we reduce ourselves by giving in 
to this foul-mouthed calumny against the Catholic 
Church: to a pretty state do we reduce ourselves by our 
tame and stupid listening to those who calumniate the 
Catholic Church, because they live on the spoils of it, 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

To a pretty state do we come, when we, if we still lis- 
ten to these calumniators, proclaim to the world, that 
our only hope of salvation rests on promises contained 
in a book, which we have received from the Scarlet 
Whore, and of the authenticity of which we have no 
voucher other than that Scarlet Whore and that Church, 
whose worship is " idolatrous" and whose doctrines are 
''-damnable!" 

20. This is pretty complete ; but still this, which ap- 
plies to all Protestants., is not enough of inconsistency 
to satisfy the to-Church of England. That Church 
has a Liturgy in great part made up of the Catholic 
service ; but, there are the two creeds, the JVicene and 
Aihanasian. The first was composed and promulgated 
by a Council of the Catholic Church and the Pope ; 
and, the second was adopted, and ordered to be used, 
by another Council of that Church, with the Pope at 
its head. Must not a Parson of this tow-Church be 
pretty impudent, then, to call the PorE " Antichrist," 
and to call the Catholic Church "idolatrous?" Pretty 
impudent, indeed ; but we do not, even yet, see the 
grossest inconsistency of all. 

21. To our to-Church Prayer-Book there is a Ca- 
lendar prefixed, and, in this* Calendar there are, un- 
der different days of the year, certain names of holy 
men and women. Their names are put here in order 
that their adversaries may be attended to, and religi- 
ously attended to," by the people. Now, who are those 
holy persons ? Some Protestant Saints, to be sure? Not 
one! What, not saint Luther, nor saint Cranmer, nor 
saint Edward the Sixth, nor the " VIRGIN" saint Eli- 
zabeth? Not a soul of them ; but, a whole list of Popes, 
Catholic Bishops, and Catholic holy persons, female as 
well as male. Several virgins ; but not the " VIRGIN 
Queen," nor any one of the Protestant race. At first 
sight, this seems odd ; for, this Calendar was made 
by Act of Parliament. But, the 'ruth is, it was neces- 
sary to preserve some of the names, so long revered by 
the people, in order to keep them in better humour, and 
to lead them by degrees into the new religion. At any 
rate, here is the Prayer-Book, holding up for our res- 
pect and reverence a whole list of Popes and of other per 

2 • 



14 PROTESTANT REFORMATION- 

SODS belonging to the Catholic Church, while those who 
teach us to read and to repeat the contents of this same 
Prayer-Book, are incessantly dinning in our ears, that 
the Popes have all been " Antichrists" and that their 
Church was, and is, idolatrous in its worship, and dam' 
nable in its doctrines! 

22. Judge Bayley, (one of the present twelve 
Judges,) has, I have heard, written a Commentary on 
the Common Prayer-Book. 1 should like to know what 
the Judge says about these Catholic Saints, (and no 
others,) being placed in this Protestant Calendar. We 
shall in due time, see the curious way in which this 
Prayer-Book was first made, and how it was new-model- 
led from time to time. But here it is now, even to this 
day, with the Catholic Saints in the Calendar, whence 
it seems, that, even down to the reign of Charles II., 
when the last " improvement" was made in it, there had 
not appeared any Protestant Saints to supply the place 
of the old Catholic ones. 

23. But, there is still a dilemma for these revilers of 
the Catholic religion. We swear on the four Evange- 
lists ! And these, mind, we get from the Pope and a 
Council of the Catholic Church. So that, if the Pope 
be " Antichrist," that is* to say, if those who have taught 
us to abuse and abhor the Catholics ; if those be not 
the falsest and most malignant wretches that ever breath- 
ed, here are we swearing upon a book handed down to 
us by " Antichrist ?" And, as if the inconsistencies 
and absurdities springing out of this Protestant calum- 
ny were to have no end, that " Christianity" which the 
judges say, u is part and parcel of the law of the land ;" 
that Christianity is no other than what is taught in this 
same New Testament. Take the New Testament 
away, and there is not a particle of this u part and par- 
cel" left. What is our situation ; what a figure does this 
part and parcel of the laic of the land make, with a do- 
zen of persons in gaol for offending against it ; what a 
figure does it make, if we adopt the abuse and false- 
hood of the revilers of the Catholic Church! What a 
figure does that " part and parcel" make, if we follow 
our teachers ; if we follow Joshua Watson's Society ; 
if we follow every brawler from every tub in the coun- 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

try, and say that the Pope, (from whom we got the 
u part and parcel,"; is "Antichrist" and the " Scarlet 
Whore!" 

24. Enough! Aye, and much more than enough to 
make us sorely repent of having so long been the dupes 
of the crafty and selfish revilers of the religion of our 
fathers. Were there ever presumption, impudence, in- 
consistency and insincerity equal to those of which 
we have just taken a view? When we thus open our 
eyes and look into the matter, we are astonished at, and 
ashamed of, our credulity ; and, this more especially 
when we reflect, that the far greater part of us have suffer- 
ed ourselves to he misled by men not possessing a tenth 
part of our own capacity ; by a set of low-minded, 
greedy creatures ; but, indefatigable ; never losing sight 
of the spoil ; and, day after day, and year after year, 
close at the ears of the people from their very child- 
hood, din, din, din, incessantly, until from mere habit, 
the monstrous lie got sucked in for gospel-truth. Had 
the lie been attended with wo consequences, it might have 
been merely laughed at, as all men of sense laugh at the 
old silly lie about the late King having " made the Judges 
independent of the Crown." But, there have been con- 
sequences, and those most dreadful. By the means of 
the great Protestant lie, the Catholics and Protestants 
have been kept in a constant state of hostile feeling to- 
wards each other ; and both, but particularly the form- 
er, have been, in one shape or another, oppressed and 
plundered, for ages, with impunity to the oppressors 
and plunderers. 

25. Having now shown, that the censure heaped on 
the religion of our forefathers is not only unjust, but ab- 
surd and monstrous : having shown that there could be 
no good reason for altering the religion of England from 
Catholic to Protestant : having exposed the vile and sel- 
fish calumniators, and duly prepared the mind of every 
just person for that fair and honest inquiry, of which I 
spoke in paragraph 4 : having done this, I should now 
enter on that inquiry, and show, in the first place, how 
this " Reformation," as it is called, " was engendered by 
beastly lust ;" but, there is yet one topic to be touched 
on in this preliminary Number of my little Work. 



16 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

26. Truth has, with regard to this subject, made 
great progress in the public mind, in England, within 
the last dozen years. Men are not now to be carried 
away by the cry of u No-Fopery" and the " Church in 
danger." Parson Hay, at Manchester, Parson Dent, 
at Northallerton, and their like all over the country, have 
greatly enlightened us. Parson Morritt, at Skibber- 
reen, has done great good in this work of enlightening. 
Nor must we forget a Right Reverend Protestant Father 
in God, who certainly did more in the opening of eyes 
than any Bishop that I ever before heard of. So that it 
is now by no means rare to hear Protestants allow, that, 
as to fmth, as to morals, aa to salvation, the Catholic 
religion is quite good enough ; and, a very large part of 
the people of England are forward to declare, that the 
Catholics have been most barbarously treated, and that 
it is time that they had justice done them, 

27. But, with all these just notions, there exists, 
amongst Protestants in general, an opinion, that the Ca- 
tholic religion is unfavorable to civil liberty, and also un- 
favorable to the producing and the exerting of genius 
and talent. As to the former, I shall, in the course of 
this work, find a suitable place for proving, by the me- 
lancholy experience of this country, that a total want of 
civil liberty, was unknown in England, as long as its re- 
ligion was Catholic ; and, that the moment it lost the 
protection of theV ope, its kings and nobles became horrid 
tyrants, and its people the most abject and most ill-treat- 
ed of slaves. This I shall prove in due time and place ; 
and I beg you, my friends, to bear in mind, that I pledge 
myself to this proof. 

28. And now to the other charge against the Catholic 
religion ; namely, that it is unfavorable to the producing 
of genius and tale7it, and to the causing of them to be ex- 
erted. I am going, in a minute to prove, that this charge 
is not only false, but ridiculously and most stupidly 
false ; but, before I do this, let me observe, that this 
charge comes from the same source with all the other 
charges against the Catholics. " Monkish ignorance 
and superstition" is a phraise that you find in every Pro- 
testant historian, from the reign of the " VIRGIN" Eli- 
zabeth to the present hour. It has, with time, become 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

a sort of magpie-saying, like " glorious revolution" 
" happy constitution ," " good old king " u envy of sur- 
rounding nations" and the like. But there has always, 
false as the notion will presently be proved to be, there 
has always been a very sufficient motive for inculcating 
it. Blackstone, for instance, in his Commentaries on 
the Laws of England, never lets slip an opportunity to 
rail against " Monkish ignorance and superstition" — 
Blackstone was no fool. At the very time when he 
was writing these Commentaries, and reading them to 
the students at Oxford, he was, and he knew it, LIV- 
ING upon the spoils of the Catholic Church, and the 
spoils of the Catholic gentry, and also of the poor! He 
knew that well. He knew that, if every one had his 
due, he would not have been fattening where he was. 
He knew, besides, that all who heard his lectures were 
aware of the spoils that he was wallowing in. These 
considerations were quite sufficient to induce him to 
abuse the Catholic Church, and to affect to look back 
with contempt to Catholic times. 

29. For cool, placid, unruffled impudence, there have 
been no people in the world to equal the " Reforma- 
tion" gentry ; and Blackstone seems to have inherit- 
ed this quality in a direct line from some altar-robber of 
the reign of that sweet young Protestant Saint, Edward 
the Sixth. If Blackstone had not actually felt the 
spoils of the Catholics sticking to his ribs, he would 
have recollected, that all those things which he was eu- 
logizing, magna charta, trial by jury, the offices of sher- 
iff, justice of the peace, constable, and all the rest of it, 
arose in days of " monkish ignorance and superstition?"* 
If his head had not been rendered muddy by his gor- 
mandizing on the spoils of the Catholic Church, he 
would have remembered, that Fortescue, and that that 
greatest of all our lawyers, Lyttleton, were born, 
bred, lived and died in the days of " monkish ignorance 
and superstition." But, did not this Blackstone know, 
that the very roof, under which he was abusing our 
Catholic forefathers, was made by these forefathers ? 
Did he not, when he looked up to that roof, or, when 
he beheld any of those noble buildings, which in defi- 
ance of time, still tell us what those forefathers were ; 
2* 



18 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 



was 



did he not, when he beheld any of these, feel that he 
a pigmy in mind, compared with those whom he had the 
impudence to abuse ? 

30. When we hear some Jew, or Orange-man, or 
parson-justice, or Jocelyn saint, talk about " monkish 
ignorance and superstition," we turn from him with si- 
lent contempt : but Blackstone is to be treated in 
another manner. It was at Oxford where he wrote, 
and where he was reading his Commentaries. He well 
knew that the foundations for learning at Oxford were 
laid, and brought to perfection, not only in monkish 
times, but, in great part, by monks. He knew " that 
" the Abbeys were public schools for education, each of 
" them having one or more persons set apart to instruct 
" the youth of the neighbourhood, without any expense to 
" the parents" He knew, that " each of the greater 
" monasteries had a peculiar residence in the universi- 
" ties ; and, whereas, there were, in those times, nearly 
"THREE HUNDRED HALLS and PRIVATE 
" SCHOOLS at Oxford, besides the colleges, there 
"were not above EIGHT remaining towards the mid- 
'" die of the 17th century." [Phillips's Life of Cardinal 
Pole, Part I. p. 220.] That is to say, in about a hundred 
years after the enlightening " Reformation" began. At 
this time, (1824,) there are, I am informed, only FIVE 
Halls remaining, and not a single school. 

31. I shall, in another place, have to show more fully 
the folly, and, indeed, the baseness, of railing against 
the monastic institutions generally ; but I must here 
confine myself to this charge against the Catholic reli- 
gion, of being unfavourable to genius, talent, and, in 
short, to the powers of the mind. It is a strange notion ; 
$nd one can hardly hear it mentioned without suspect- 
ing, that, some how or other, there is plunder at the 
|»ottom of the apparently nothing but stupid idea. Those 
^ho put forward this piece of rare impudence do not 
fevour us with the reasons for believing that the Catho- 
lic religion has any such tendency. They content them- 
selves with the bare assertion, not supposing that it ad- 
mits of any thing like disproof They look upon it as 
assertion against assertion ; and, in a question which de- 
pends on mere hardness of mouth, they know that their 



INTRODUCTION. 1 9 

triumph is secure. But, this is a question that does ad- 
mit of proof, and very good proof too. The " Reform- 
ation," in England, was pretty nearly completed hy the 
year 1 600. By that time all the " monkish ignorance 
and superstition" were swept away. The monasteries 
were all pretty nearly knocked down, young Saint Ed- 
ward's people had robbed all the altars, and the " VIR- 
GIN" Queen had put the finishing hand to the pillage. 
So that all was, in 1600, become as Protestant as heart 
could wish. Very well ; the kingdom of France re- 
mained buried in "monkish ignorance and superstition" 
until the year 1787 : that is to say, 187 years after 
happy England stood in a blaze of Protestant light! 
Now, then, if we carefully examine into the number of 
men remarkable for great powers of mind, men famed 
for their knowledge or genius; if we carefully exa- 
mine into the number of such men produced by France in 
these 1 87 years, and the number of such men produced by 
England, Scotland, and Ireland, during the same period; 
if we do this, we shall get at a pretty good foundation for 
judging of the effects of the two religions with regard 
to their influence on knowledge, genius, and what is 
generally called learning. 

32. " Oh, no !" exclaim the fire-shovels. " France is 
a great deal bigger, and contains more people than these 
Islands ; and this is not fair play!" Do not be fright- 
ened, good fire-shovels. According to your own ac- 
count, these Islands contain twenty-one millions ; and the 
French say, that they have thirty millions. Therefore, 
when we have got the numbers, we will make an al- 
lowance of one-third in our favour accordingly. If, for 
instance, the French have not three famous men to eve- 
ry two of ours, then I shall confess, that the law-estab- 
lished Church, and its family of Muggletonians, Came- 
ronians, Jumpers, Unitarians, Shakers, Quakers, and 
the rest of the Protestant litter, are more favourable to 
knowledge and genius, than is the Catholic Church. 

33. But how are we to ascertain these numbers : 
Very well. I shall refer to a work which has a place 
in every good library in the kingdom ; I mean, the 
" Universal Historical, Critical, and Biblio- 
graphical Dictionary," This work, which is every 



20 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

where received as authority as to facts. , contains lists of 
persons of all nations, celebrated for their published 
works. But, then, to have a place in these lists, the 
person must have been really distinguished ; his or her 
works must have been considered as worthy of univer- 
sal notice. From these lists I shall take my numbers, 
as before proposed. It will not be necessary to go in- 
to all the arts and sciences : eight or nine will be suf- 
ficient. It may be as well, perhaps, to take the Ital- 
ians as well as the French ; for we all know that they 
were living in most shocking " monkish ignorance and 
superstition ;" and that they, poor, unfortunate and un- 
plundered souls, are so living until this very day ! 

34. Here, then, is the statement ; and you have only 
to observe, that the figures represent the number of per- 
sons who were famous for the art or science opposite 
the name of which the figures are placed. The period 
is, from the year 1600 to 1787, during which period 
France was under what young George Rose calls the 
u dark despotism of the Catholic Church," and what 
Blackstone calls " monkish ignorance and supersti- 
tion;" and during the same period, these islands were 



in a blaze of light, sent forth by Luther 


, Cranmer, 


Knox, and their followers. Here, then, 


is the state- 


ment : 

England Scotland, 




and Ireland. France. 


Italy. 


"Writers on law, - - - - 6 ... 51 - 


- - - 9 


Mathematicians, - - - - 17 - - - 52 - 


- - - 15 


Physicians and Surgeons, - 13 - - . 72 - 


- - - 21 


Writers on Natuial History, 6 - - -'33. - 


- - - 11 


Historians, 21--- 139 - 


... 22 


Dramatic Writers, - - -19 - - - 66 - 


. . - 6 


Grammarians, - - - - 7 - - - 42 - 


- - - 2 


Poets, 38 - - - 157 - 


... 34 


Painters, ------5-- -64- 


... 44 



132 676 164 

35. Here is that very " SCALE," which a modest 
Scotch writer spoke of the other day, when he told the 
public, that, "Throughout Europe, Protestants rank 
" higher in the scale of intellect than Catholics, and that 
" Catholics in the neighbourhood of Protestants arc 
" more intellectual than those at a distance from them." 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

This is a fine specimen of upstart Protestant impudence. 
The above " scale" is, however, a complete answer to 
it. Allow one third more to the French on account of 
their superior populousness, and then there will remain 
to them 451 to our 132 ! So that they had, man for man, 
three and a half times as much intellect as we, though 
they were buried all the while in u monkish ignorance 
and superstition," and though they had no Protestant 
neighbours to catch the intellect from! Even the Ital- 
ians surpass us in this rivalship for intellect ; for their 
population is not equal to that of which we boast, and 
their number of men of mind considerably exceeds that 
of ours. But, do I not, all this while, misunderstand 
the matter ? And, by intellect, does not the Scotchman 
mean the capacity to make not books and pictures, but 
checks, bills, bonds, exchequer bills, ini7nitable notes, and 
the like ? Does he not mean loan-jobbing and stock- 
jobbing, insurance-booking, annuities at ten per cent, 
kite-flying, and all the "intellectual," proceedings of 
Change Alley ; not, by any means forgetting works like 
those of Aslett and Fauntleroy ? Ah! in that case, 
I confess that he is right. On this scale Protestants do 
rank high i7ideed ! And I should think it next to im- 
possible for a Catholic to live in their neighbourhood 
without being much " more intellectual ;" that is to say, 
much more of a Jewish knave, than if he lived at a dis 
tance from them. 

36. Here, then,, my friends, sensible and just Eng- 
lishmen, I close this introductory Letter. I have shown 
you how grossly we have been deceived, even from our 
very infancy. I have shown you not only the injustice, 
but the absurdity of the abuse heaped by our interested 
deluders on the religion of their and our fathers. I 
have shown you enough to convince you, that there was 
no obviously just cause for an alteration in the religion 
of our country. I have, I dare say, awakened in your 
minds, a strong desire to know how it came to pass, then y 
that this alteration was made : and, in the following 
Letters, it shall be my anxious endeavour fully to grat- 
ify this desire. But, observe, my chief object is to show, 
that this alteration made the main body of the people 
poor and miserable, compared with what they were be- 



22 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

fore ; that it impoverished and degraded them ; that it 
banished at once, that " Old English Hospitality" of 
which we have since known nothing but the name : and 
that, in lieu of that hospitality, it gave us pauperism, a 
thing, the very name of which was never before known 
in England. 



LETTER II. 

Origin of the Catholic Church. 

History of the Church, in England, down to 
the time of the "reformation." 

Beginning of the "Reformation" by King Hen- 
ry VIII. 



Kensington, 30th December, 1 S24. 
My Friends, 

37. It was not a reformation, but a devastation, of 
England, which was, at the time when this event took 
place, the happiest country, perhaps; that the world 
had ever seen , and, it is my chief business to show, 
that this devastation impoverished and degraded the main 
body of the people. But, in order that you may see 
this devastation in its true light, and that you may feel a 
just portion of indignation against the devastators, and 
against their eulogists of the present day, it is necessa- 
ry, first, that you take a correct view of the things on 
which their devastating powers were exercised. 

38. The far greater part of those books, which are 
called " Histories of England" are little better than 
romances. They treat of battles, negociations, intrigues 
of courts, amours of kings, queens and nobles : they 
contain the gossip and scandal of former times, and ve- 
ry little else. There are histories of England, like 
that of Dr. Goldsmith, for the use of young persons; 
but, no young person, who has read them through, 
knows any more, of any possible use, than he or she 
knew before. The great use of history, is to teach us 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 23 

how laws, usages and institutions arose, what were 
their effects on the people, how they promoted public hap- 
piness, or otherwise ; and these things are precisely 
what the greater part of historians, as they call them- 
selves, seem to think of no consequence. 

39. We never understand the nature and constituent 
parts of a thing so well as when we ourselves have 
made the thing : next to making it is the seeing of it 
made : but, if we have neither of these advantages, we 
ought, at least, if possible, to get at a true description 
of the origin of the thing, and of the manner in which 
it was put together. I have to speak to you of the 
Catholic Church generally ; then of the Church in 
England, under which head I shall have to speak of the 
parish-churches, the monasteries, the tithes, and other 
revenues of the Church. It is, therefore, necessary that 
I explain to you how the Catholic Church arose ; and 
how churches, monasteries, tithes, and other church 
revenues came to be in England. When you have this 
information, you will well understand ivhat it teas which 
was devastated by Henry VIII. and the " reformation" 
people. And, I am satisfied, that, when you have read 
this one Number of my little work, you will know 
more about your country than you have learned, or ever 
will learn, from the reading of hundreds of those bulky 
volumes, called " Histories of England." 

40. The Catholic Church originated with Jesus 
Christ himself. He selected Peter to be head of his 
Church. This Apostle's name was Simon ; but, his 
Master called him Peter, which means a stone or rock; 
and he said, " on this rock will I build my church." — 
Look at the Gospel of Saint Matthew, xvi. 18, 19, and 
at that of Saint John, xxi. 15, and onward ; and you will 
see, that we must deny the truth of the Scriptures, or 
acknowledge, that here was a head of the Church pro- 
mised for all generations. 

41. Saint Peter died a martyr at Rome in about 60 
years after the birth of Christ. But another supplied 
his place ; and there is the most satifactory evidence, 
that the chain of succession has remained unbroken 
from that day to this. When I said, in paragraph 10, 
that it might be said, that there was no Pope seated at 



24 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

Rome for the first three hundred years, I by no means 
meant to admit the fact ; but to get rid of a pretence 
which, at any rate, could not apply to England, which 
was converted to Christianity by missionaries sent by a 
Pope, the successor of other Popes, who had been seat- 
ed at Rome for hundreds of years. The truth is that 
from the persecutions which, for the first three hundred 
years, the Church underwent, the Chief Bishops, suc- 
cessors of Saint Peter, had not always the means of 
openly maintaining their supremacy; but they always 
existed; there was always a Chief Bishop, and his su- 
premacy was always acknowledged by the Church; that 
is to say, by all the Christians then in the world. 

42. Of later date, the Chief Bishop has been called, 
in our language, the Pope, and, in the French, Pape. 
In the Latin he is called Papa, which is an union and 
abbreviation of the two Latin words, Pater Patrum, 
which mean Father of Fathers. Hence comes the ap- 
pellation of papa, which children of all Christian na- 
tions give to their fathers; an appellation of the high- 
est respect and most ardent and sincere affection. 
Thus, then, the Pope, each as he succeeded to his of- 
fice, became the Chief or Head of the Church; and 
his supreme power and authority were acknowledged, 
as I have observed in paragraph 3, by all the bishops, 
and all the teachers of Christianity, in all the nations 
where that religion existed. The Pope was, and is, as- 
sisted by a body of persons called Cardinals, or 
Great Councillors; and at various and numerous times, 
Councils of the Church have been held, in order to 
discuss and settle matters of deep interest to the unity 
and well-being of the Church. These Councils have 
been held in all the countries of Christendom. Many 
were held in England. The Popes themselves have 
been taken promiscuously from men of all the Chris- 
tian nations. Pope Adrian IV. was an Englishman, 
the son of a very poor labouring man; but having be- 
come a servant in a monastery, he was there taught, 
and became himself a monk. In time he grew fa- 
mous for his learning, his talents, and piety, and at last 
became the Head of the Church. 

43. The Popedom, or office of Pope, continued in 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 25 

in existence, through all the great and repeated revolu- 
tions of kingdoms and empires. The Roman Empire, 
which was at the height of its glory at the beginning of 
the Christain era, and which extended, indeed, nearly 
over the whole of Europe, and a part of Africa and Asia, 
crumbled all to pieces; yet the Popedom remained; and 
at the time when the devastation, commonly called the 
" Reformation," of England began, there had been dur- 
ing the fifteen hundred years, about two hundred and 
sixty Popes, following each other in due and unbroken 
succession. 

44. The History of the Church in England, down 
to the time of the " Reformation," is a matter of deep 
interest to us. A mere look at it, a bare sketch of the 
principal facts, will show how false, how unjust, how 
ungrateful those have been who have vilified the Catho- 
lic Church, its Popes, its Monks, and its Priests. It is 
supposed, by some, and indeed, with good authorities 
on their side, that the Christian religion was partially 
introduced into England so early as the second century 
after Christ. But we know for a certainty, that it was 
introduced effectually in the year 596; that is to say, 
923 years before Henry VIII. began to destroy it. 

45. England, at the time when this religion was in- 
troduced, was governed by seven kings, and that state 
was called the Heptarchv. The people of the whole 
country were PAGANS. Yes, my friends, our ances- 
tors were PAGANS: they worshipped gods made with 
hands; and they sacrificed children on the altars of 
their idols. In this state England was, when the Pope 
of that day, Gregory I. sent forty monks, with a monk 
of the name of Austin, (or Augustin,) at their head, 
to preach the gospel to the English. Look into the 
Calendar of our Common Prayer Book, and you will 
find the name of Gregory the Great under the 12th 
of March, and that of Augustin under the 26th of May. 
It is probable that the Pope gave his order to Austin ok 
the former day, and that Austin landed in Kent on the 
latter; or perhaps, these may be the days of the year 
on which these great benefactors of England were born. 

46. Now please to bear in mind, that this great event 
took place in the year 596. The Protestant writers 

3 



26 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

have been strangely embarrassed in their endeavors to 
make it out, that up to this time, or thereabouts, the Ca- 
tholic Church was pure, and trod in the steps of the 
Apostles; but that, after this time, that Church became 
corrupt. They applaud the character and acts of Pope 
Gregory; they do the same with regard to Austin: 
shame would not suffer them to leave their names out 
of the Calendar; but, still they want to make it out, 
there was no pure Christian religion, after the Pope 
came to be the visible and acknowledged head, and to 
have supreme authority. There are scarcely any two 
of them that agree upon this point. Some say that it 
was 300, some 400, some 500, and some 600 years be- 
fore the Catholic Church ceased to be the true Church 
of Christ. But, none of them can deny, nor dare they 
attempt it, that it was the Christian religion as practised 
at Rome; that it was the Roman Catholic religion that 
was introduced into England in the year 596, with ail 
its dogmas, rites, ceremonies, und observances, just as 
they all continued to exist at the time of the " Reforma- 
tion," and as they continue to exist in that Church 
even unto this day. Whence it clearly follows, that, 
if the Catholic Church were corrupt at the time of the 
"Reformation," or be corrupt now, be radically bad 
now, it was so in 596; and then comes the impious and 
horrid inference, mentioned in paragraph 12, that, " All 
"our fathers who first built our churches, and whose 
" bones and flesh form the earth for many feet deep in 
" all the churchyards, are now howling in the regions 
"of the damned!" 

47. " The tree is known by its fruits." Bear in mind, 
that it was the Catholic faith as now held, that was in- 
trodued into England by Pope Gregory the Great; 
and bearing this in mind, let us see what were the ef- 
fects of that introduction; let us see how that faith work- 
ed its way, in spite of wars, invasions, tyrannies, and 
political revolutions. 

4-8, Saint Austin, upon his arrival, applied to the 
Saxon king, within whose dominions the county of Kent 
lay. He obtained leave to preach to the people, and 
his success was great and immediate. He converted the 
king himself, who was very gracious to him and his bre- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 27 

iliren, and who provided dwellings and other necessa- 
ries for them at Canterbury. Saint Austin and his bre- 
thren being monks, lived together in common, and from 
this common home, went forth over the country, preach- 
ing the gospel. As their community was diminished by 
death, new members were ordained to keep up the sup- 
ply; and, besides this, the number was in time greatly 
augmented. A church was built at Canterbury. Saint 
Austin was, of course, the Bishop, or Head Priest. 
He was succeeded by other Bishops. As Christianity 
spread over the island, other communities, like that at 
Canterbury, were founded in other cities; as at London, 
Winchester, Exeter, Worcester, Norwich, York, and 
so of all the other places, where there are now Cathe- 
drals, or Bishops' Churches. Hence, in process of 
time, arose those majestic and venerable edifices, of the 
possession of which we boast as the work of our fore- 
fathers, while we have the folly and injustice and incon- 
sistency, to brand the memory of these very forefathers 
with the charge of grovelling ignorance, superstition 
and idolatry; and while we show our own meanness of 
mind in disfiguring and dishonouring those noble build- 
ings by plastering them about with our childish and gin- 
gerbread "monuments ," nine times out of ten, the off- 
spring of vanity, or corruption. 

49. As to the mode of supporting the clergy in those 
times, it was by oblations or free gifts, and sometimes 
by tithes, which land-owners paid themselves, or order- 
ed their tenants to pay, though there was no general ob- 
ligation to yield tithes for many years after the arrival 
of Saint Austin. In this collective or collegiate state, 
the clergy remained for many years. But in time, as 
the land-owners became converted to Christianity, they 
were desirous of having priests settled near to them, 
and always upon the spot, ready to perform the offices 
of religion. The land was then owned by compara- 
tively few persons. The rest of the people were vas- 
sals, or tenants, of the land-owners. The land-owners, 
therefore, built churches on their estates, and generally 
near their own houses, for the benefit of themselves, 
their vassals, and tenants. And to this day we see, in 
numerous instances, the country church close by the 



28 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

gentleman's house. When they built the churches, 
they also built a house for the priest, which we now 
call the parsonage-house; and, in most cases, they at- 
tached some plough-land, or meadow-land, or both, to 
the priest's house, for his use; and this was called his 
glebe, which word, literally taken, means the top earth, 
which is turned over by the plough. Besides these, the 
land-owners, in conformity with the custom then preva- 
lent in other Christian countries, endowed the Churches 
with the tithe of the produce of their estates. 

50. Hence parishes arose. Parish means a priest- 
ship, as the land on which a town stands is a township. 
So that the great man's estate now became a parish. He 
retained the right of appointing the priest, whenever a 
vacancy happened; but, he could not displace a priest, 
when once appointed; and the whole of the endowment 
became the property of the church, independent of his 
control. It was a long while, even two centuries, or 
more, before this became the settled law of the whole 
kingdom; but, at last, it did become such. But, to this 
possesion of so much property by the Church, certain 
important conditions were attached; and to these con- 
ditions it behoves us, of the present day, to pay par- 
ticular attention ; for, we are, at this time, more than 
ever, feeling the want of the performance of those con- 
ditions. 

51. There never can have existed a state of society; 
that is to say, a state of things in which proprietorship 
in land was acknowledged, and in which it was main- 
tained by law; there never can have existed such a 
state, without an obligation on the land-owners to take 
care of the necessitous, and to prevent them from perish- 
ing for want. The land-owners in England took care 
of their vassals and dependents. But, when Christian- 
ity, the very basis of which is charity, became estab- 
lished, the taking care of the necessitous was deposited 
in the hands of the clergy. Upon the very face of it, 
it appears monstrous, that a house, a small farm, and 
the tenth part of the produce of a large estate, should 
have been given to a priest, who could have no wife, 
and, of course, no family. But, the fact is, that the 
grants were for other purposes as well as for the sup- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 29 

port of the priests. The produce of the benefice was 
to be employed thus: "Let the priests receive the 
" tithes of the people, and keep a written account of 
"all that have paid them; and divide them, in the pre- 
" sence of such as fear God, according to canonical au- 
" thority. Let them set apart the first share for the re- 
" pairs and ornaments of the church: let them distri- 
" bute the second to the poor and the stranger with their 
"own hands in mercy and humility; and reserve the 
" third part for themselves." These were the orders 
contained in a canon, issued by a Bishop of York. At 
different times, and under different Bishops, regulations 
somewhat different were adopted; but there were al- 
ways two-fourths, at the least, of the annual produce of 
the benefice to be given to the necessitous and to be em- 
ployed in the repairing or in the ornamenting of the 
church. 

52. Thus the providing for the poor became one of 
the great duties and uses of the Church. This duty 
rested, before, on the land-owners. It must have rest- 
ed on them; for, as Blackstone observes, a right in 
the indigent " to demand a supply sufficient to all the 
" necessities of life from the more opulent part of the 
" community, is dictated by the principles of society." 
This duty could be lodged in no hands so fitly as in 
those of the clergy; for, thus the work of charity, 
the feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, 
the administering to the sick, the comforting of the 
widow, the fostering of the fatherless, came always in 
company with the performance of services to God. 
For the uncertain disposition of the rich, for their oc- 
casional and sometimes capricious charity, was substi- 
tuted, the certain, the steady, the impartial hand of a 
constantly resident and unmarried administrator of 
bodily as well as of spiritual comfort to the poor, the 
unfortunate and the stranger. 

53. We shall see, by-and-by, the condition that the 
poor were placed in, we shall see how all the labour- 
ing classes were impoverished and degraded, the mo- 
ment the tithes and other revenues of the church were 
transferred to a protestant and married clergy; and we 
shall have to take a full view of the unoaralleled bar- 

3* 



30 PROTESTANT REFORMATION* 

barity with which the Irish people were treated at that 
time; but, I have not yet noticed another great branch, 
or constituent part, of the Catholic Church, namely, 
the Monasteries, which form a subject full of inter- 
est and worthy of our best attention. The choicest 
and most highly empoisoned shafts in the quiver of the 
malice of Protestant writers, seem always to be select- 
ed when they have to rail against Monks, Friars and 
Nuns. We have seen Blackstone talking about 
" monkish ignorance and superstition ;-" and we hear 
every day, Protestant bishops and parsons railing 
against what they call " monkery" talking of the 
"drones" in monasteries, and, indeed, abusing the 
whole of those ancient institutions, as something de- 
grading to human nature, in which work of abuse they 
are most heartily joined by the thirty or forty mongrel 
sects, whose bawling-tubs are erected in every corner 
of the country. 

54. When I come to speak of the measures by 
which the monasteries were robbed, devastated and de- 
stroyed in England and Ireland, I shall show how un- 
just, base and ungrateful, this railing against them is; 
and how foolish it is besides. I shall show the vari- 
ous ways in which they were greatly useful to the com- 
munity; and I shall especially show how they operated 
in behalf of the labouring and poorer classes of the 
people. But, in this place, I shall merely describe, in 
the shortest manner possible, the origin and nature of 
those institutions, and the extent to which they existed 
in England. 

55. ^Monastery means a place of residence for monks ; 
and the word monk comes from a Greek word, which 
means a lonely person, or a person in solitude. There 
were monks, friars, and nuns. The word friar comes 
from the French word frere, which, in English, is 
brother; and the word nun comes from the French 
word nonne, which means a sister in religion, a virgin, 
separated from the world. The persons, whether male 
or female, composing one of these religious communities, 
were called a convent, and that name was sometimes 
also given to the buildings and enclosures in which the 
s^ommunity lived. The place where monks lived was 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 31 

called a monastery; that wh.3re friars lived, a friary; 
and that where nuns lived, a nunnery. As, however, 
we are not, in this case inquiring into the differences 
in the rules, orders, and habits of the persons belong- 
ing to these institutions, I shall speak of them all as 
monasteries. 

56. Then, again, some of these were abbeys, and 
some priories; of the difference between which it will 
be sufficient to say, that the former were of a rank su- 
perior to the latter, and had various privileges of a 
higher value. An abbey had an Abbot, or an abbess ; 
a priory, a prior, or a prioress. Then there were dif- 
ferent orders of monks, friars, and nuns; and these 
orders had different rules for their government and 
mode of life, and were distinguished by different 
dresses. With these distinctions we have here, how- 
ever, little to do; for we shall, bjr-and-by, see them all 
involved in one common devastation. 

57. The persons belonging to a monastery lived in 
common; they lived in one and the same building; they 
could possess 710 property individually; when they en- 
tered the walls of the monastery, they left the world 
wholly behind them; they made a solemn vow of celi- 
bacy ; they could devise nothing by will ; each had a 
life-interest, but nothing more, in the revenues belonging 
to the community; some of the monks and friars were 
also priests, but this w T as not always the case; and the 
business of the whole was, to say masses and prayers, 
and to do deeds of hospitality and charity. 

58. This mode of life began by single persons sepa- 
rating themselves from the world, and living in com- 
plete solitude, passing all their days in prayer, and de- 
dicating themselves wholly to the serving of God. 
These were called hermits, and their conduct drew to- 
wards them great respect. In time, such men, or men 
having a similar propensity, formed themselves into so- 
cieties, and agreed to live together in one house, and to 
possess things in common. Women did the same. And 
hence came those places called monasteries. The piety, 
the austerities, and particularly, the works of kindness 
and of charity performed by those persons, made them 
objects of great veneration; and the rich made them, 



32 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

in time, the channels of their benevolence to the poor. 
Kings, queens, princes, princesses, nobles, and gentle- 
men founded monasteries; that is to say, erected the 
builings, and endowed them with estates for their main- 
tenance. Others, some in the way of atonement for 
their sins, and some from a pious disposition, gave, 
while alive, or bequeathed at their death, lands, houses 
or money, to monasteries already erected. So that, in 
time, the monasteries became the owners of great land- 
ed estates; they had the lordship over innumerable ma- 
nors, and had a tenantry of prodigious extent, especial- 
ly in England, where the monastic orders were always 
held in great esteem, in consequence of Christianity 
having been introduced into the kingdom by a commu- 
nity of monks. 

59. To give you as clear a notion as I can of what 
a monastery was, I will describe to you, with as much 
exactness as my memory will enable me, a monastery 
which I saw. in France, in 1792, just after the monks 
had been turned out of it, and when it was about to be 
put up for sale f The whole of the space enclosed 
was about eight English acres, which was fenced in by 
a wall about twenty feet high. It was an oblong square, 
and at one end of one of the sides was a gate-way, 
with gates as high as the wall, and with a little door in 
one of the great gates for the ingress and egress of foot- 
passengers. This gate opened into a spacious court- 
yard, very nicely paved. On one side, and at one end 
of this yard, were the kitchen, lodging-rooms for ser- 
vants, a dining or eating place for them and for stran- 
gers and poor people; stables, coach-houses, and other 
out-buildings. On the other side of the court-yard, we 
entered in at a door-way to the place of residence 
of the monks. Here was about half an acre of ground 
of a square form, for a burying ground. On the four 
sides of this square there was a cloister or piazza, the 
roof of which was on the side of the burying ground, 
supported by pillars, and at the back supported by a 
low building, which went round the four sides. This 
building contained the several dormitories, or sleeping- 
rooms of the monks, each of whom had two little 
rooms, one for his bed, and one for his books and to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 33 

sit in. Out of the hinder room, a door opened into a 
little garden about thirty feet wide, and forty long. On 
one side of the cloister, there was a door opening into 
their dining-room, in one corner of which there was a 
pulpit for the monk who read while the rest were eat- 
ing in silence, which was according to the rules of the 
Carthusians, to which Order these monks belonged. 
On the other side of the cloister, a door opened into the 
kitchen garden, which was laid out in the nicest manner, 
and was well stocked with fruit trees of all sorts. On 
another side of the cloister, a door opened and led to 
the church, which, though not large, was one of the 
most beautiful that I had ever seen. I believe, that 
these monks were, by their rules, confined within their 
wails. The country people spoke of them with great 
reverence, and most grievously deplored the loss of 
them. They had large estates, were easy landlords, 
and they wholly provided for all the indigent withia 
miles of their monastery. 

60. England, more, perhaps, than any other country 
in Europe, abounded in such institutions, and these more 
richly endowed than any where else. In England there 
was, on an average, more than twenty, (we shall see the 
exact number by-and-bye,) of those establishments to a 
county 1 . Here was a prize for an unjust and cruel tyrant 
to lay his lawless hands upon, and for " reformation, 
gentry to share amongst them! Here was enough, in- 
deed, to make robbers on a grand scale cry out against 
"monkish ignorance and superstition'" No wonder 
that the bowels of Cranmer, Knox, and all their mon- 
grel litter, yearned so piteously as they did, when they 
cast their pious eyes on all the farms and manors, and 
on all the silver and gold ornaments, belonging to these 
communities! We shall see, by-and-bye, with what 
alacrity they ousted, plundered, and pulled down:; we 
shall see them robbing, under the basest pretences, even 
the altars of the county parish churches, down to the 
very smallest of those churches, and down to the value 
of five shillings. But, we must first take a view of the 
motives which led the tyrant, Henry VIII., to set their 
devastating and plundering faculties in motion. 



34 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

61. This King succeeded his father, Henry VII., in 
the year 1509. He succeeded to a great and prosper- 
ous kingdom, a full treasury, and a happy and content- 
ed people, who expected in him the wisdom of his father 
without his avarice, which seems to have been that fa- 
ther's only fault. Henry VIII. was eighteen years old 
when his father died. He had had an elder brother, nam- 
ed Arthur, who, at the early age of twelve years, had 
been betrothed to Catherine, fourth daughter of Fer- 
dinand, King of Castile and Arragon. When Arthur 
was fourteen years old, the Princess came to England, 
and the marriage ceremony was performed; but Arthur, 
who was a weak and sickly boy, died before the year 
w r as out, and the marriage never was consummated; and, 
indeed, who will believe that it could be ? Henry 
wished to marry Catherine, and the marriage was 
agreed to by the parents on both sides ; but it did not 
take place until after the death of Henry VII. The 
moment the young King came to the throne, he took 
measures for his marriage. Catherine being, though 
only nominally, the ividow of his deceased brother, it 
was necessary to have, from the Pope, as supreme 
head of the Church, a dispensation, in order to render 
the marriage lawful in the eye of the canon law. The 
-dispensation, to which there could be no valid objection, 
was obtained, and the marriage was, amidst the rejoic- 
ings of the whole nation, celebrated in June, 1509, in 
less than two months after the King's accession. 

62. With this lady, who was beautiful in her youth, 
and whose virtues of all sorts seem scarcely ever to 
have been exceeded, he lived in the married state sev- 
enteen years, before the end of which he had three 
sons and two daughters by her, one of whom only, a 
daughter, was still alive, who afterwards was Mary 
Queen of England. But now, at the end of seventeen 
years, he being thirty-five years of age, and eight years 
younger than the queen, and having cast his eyes on a 
young lady, an attendant on the queen, named Anne 
Boleyn, he, all of a sudden, affected to believe that he 
was living in sin, because he was married to the wi- 
dow of his brother, though, as we have seen, the mar- 
riage between Catherine and the brother had never 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 35 

been consummated, and though the parents of both the 
parties, together with his own Council, had unanimously 
and unhesitatingly approved of his marriage, which 
had, moreover, been sanctioned by the Pope, the head 
of the Church, of the faith and observances of which 
Henry himself had, as we shall hereafter see, been, 
long since his marriage, a zealous defender! 

63. But the tyrant's passions were now in motion, and 
he resolved to gratify his beastly lust, cost what it might 
in reputation, in treasure, and in blood. He first ap- 
plied to the Pope to divorce him from his queen. He 
was a great favourite of the Pope, he was very power- 
ful, there were many strong motives for yielding to his 
request; but that request was so full of injustice, it 
would have been so cruel towards the virtuous queen to 
accede to it, that the Pope could not, and did not, grant, 
it. He, however, in hopes that time might induce the 
tyrant to relent, ordered a court to be held by his Le- 
gate and Wolsey, in England, to hear and determine 
the case. Before this court the Queen disdained to 
plead, and the Legate, dissolving the court, referred 
the matter back to the Pope, who still refused to take 
any step towards the granting of the divorce. The ty- 
rant now became furious, resolved upon overthrowing 
the power of the Pope in England, upon making him- 
self the head of the Church in this country, and upon 
doing whatever else might be necessary to insure the 
gratification of his beastly desires, and the glutting of 
his vengeance. 

64. By making himself the supreme head of the 
Church, he made himself, he having the sword and the 
gibbet at his command, master of all the property of 
that church, including that of the monasteries! His 
counsellors and courtiers knew this; and, as it was 
soon discovered that a sweeping confiscation would take 
place, the parliament was by no means backward in aid- 
ing his designs, every one hoping to share in the plun- 
der. The first step was to pass acts taking from the 
Pope all authority and power over the Church in Eng- 
land, and giving to the King all authority whatever as to 
ecclesiastical matters. His chief adviser and abettor 
was THOMAS CRANMER, a name which deserves 



36 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

to be held in everlasting execration; a name which we 
could not pronounce without almost doubting the jus- 
tice of God, were it not for our knowledge of the fact, 
that the cold-blooded, most perfidious, most impious, 
most blasphemous caitiff expired, at last, amidst those 
flames which he himself had been the chief cause of 
kindling. 

65. The tyrant, being now both Pope and King, 
made Cranmer Archbishop o? Canterbury, a dignity 
just then become vacant. Of course, this adviser and 
ready tool now became chief judge in all ecclesiastical 
matters. But, here was a difficulty; for the tyrant still 
professed to be a Catholic ; so that this new Archbish- 
op was to be consecrated according to the usual pontifi- 
cial form, which required of him to swear obedience to 
the Pope. And here a transaction took place, that will, 
at once, show us of what sort of stuff the " reforma- 
tion" gentry were made. Cranmer, before he went to 
the altar to be consecrated, went into a chapel, and 
there made a declaration on oath, that, by the oath that 
he was aboat to take, and which, for the sake of form, 
he was obliged to take, he did not intend to bind him- 
self to any thing that tended to prevent him from as- 
sisting the King in making any such " reforms" as he 
might think useful in the Church of England ! I once 
knew a corrupt Cornish knave, who having sworn to a 
direct falsehood, (and that he, in private, acknowledgzd 
to be such.) before an Election Committee of the House 
of Commons, being asked how he could possibly give 
such evidence, actually declared, in so many words, 
" that he had, before he left his lodging in the morning, 
u taken an oath that he would swear falsely that day." 
He, perhaps, imbibed his principles from this very 
Archbishop, who occupies the highest place in lying 
Fox's lying book of Protestant Martyrs. 

66. Having provided himself with so famous & judge 
in ecclesiastical matters, the King lost, of course, no 
time, in bringing his hard case before him, and demand- 
ing justice at his hands ! Hard case, indeed ; to be com- 
pelled to live with a wife of forty-three, when he could 
have, for next to nothing, and only for asking for, a 
young one of eightmi or twenty ! A really hard case : 



JROTESTANT REFORMATION. 37 

and he sought relief, now that he had got such an up- 
right and impartial judge, with all imaginable dispatch. 
What I am now going to relate of the conduct of this 
Archbishop and of the other parties concerned in the 
transaction, is calculated to make us shudder with hor- 
ror, to make our very bowels heave with loathing, to 
make us turn our eyes from the paper, aud resolve to 
read no further. But, we must not give way to these 
feelings, if we have a mind to know the true history of 
the Protestant " Reformation.' 7 We must keep our- 
selves cool ; we must reason ourselves out of our ordi- 
nary impulses; we must beseech nature to be quiet 
within us for a while; for, from first to last, we have to 
contemplate nothing that is not of a kind to fill us with 
horror and disgust. 

67. It was now four or five years since the king and 
Cranmer had begun to hatch the project of the divorce , 
but, in the meanwhile, the king had kept Anne Boy- 
len, or, in more modern phrase, she had been " under 
his protection" for about three years. And, here, let 
me state, that in Dr. Bayley's life of Bishop Fisher, 
it is positively asserted, that Anne Boylen was the 
king's daughter, and that Lady Boylen, her mother, 
said to the king, when he was about to marry Anne, 
" Sir, for the reverence of God, take heed what you do 
" in marrying my daughter, for, if you record your 
i: own conscience well, she is your own daughter as 
" well as mine." To which the king replied, " Whose 
" daughter soever she is, she shall be my wife," Now, 
though / believe this fact, I do not give it as a thing the 
truth of which is undeniable. I find it in the writings 
of a man, who was the eulogist, (and justly,) of the ex- 
cellent Bishop Fisher, who suffered death because he 
stood firmly on the side of Queen Catherine. I be- 
lieve it : but I do not give it, as I do the other facts that 
I state, as what is undeniably true. God knows, it is 
unnecessary to make the parties blacker than they are 
made by the Protestant historians themselves, in even 
a favourable record of their horrid deeds. 

68. The king had had Anne about three years "un- 
der his protection," when she became, for the first 
time, with child. There was now, therefore, no time to 






38 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

be lost in order to " make an honest woman of her." A 
private marriage took place in January, 1533. As 
Anne's pregnancy could not be long disguised, it beeame 
necessary to avow her marriage ; and, therefore, it was- 
also necessary to press onward the trial for the divorce ; 
for, it might have seemed rather awkward , even amongst 
" reformation" people, for the king to have two wives at 
a time! Now, then, the famous ecclesiastical judge, 
Cranmer, had to play his part; and, if his hypocrisy 
did not make the devil blush, he could have no blushing 
faculties in him. Cranmer, in April, 1533, wrote a 
letter to the king, begging him, for the good of the na- 
tion, and for the safety of his own soul, to grant his 
permission to try the question of the divorce, and be- 
seeching him no longer to live in the peril attending an 
" incestuous intercourse !" Matchless, astonishing hyp- 
ocrite! He knew, and the king knew that he knew, 
and he knew that the king knew that he knew it, that 
the king had been actually married to Anne three months 
before, she being with child at the time when he mar- 
ried her! 

69. The King graciously condescended to listen to 
this ghostly advice of his pious primate, who was so 
anxious about the safety of his royal soul; and, without 
delay, he, as Head of the Church, granted the ghostly 
father, Cranmer, who, in violation of his clerical vows, 
had, in private, a woman by his own; to this ghostly 
father the King granted a license to hold a spiritual 
court for the trial of the divorce. Queen Catherine, 
who had been ordered to retire from the court, resided, 
at this time, at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, at a little 
distance from Dunstable. At this latter place Cran- 
mer opened his court, and sent a citation to the Queen 
to appear before him, which citation she treated with 
the scorn that it deserved. When he had kept his 
" court" open the number of days required by the law, 
he pronounced sentence against the Queen, declaring 
her marriage with the King null from the beginning ; 
and having done this, he closed his farcical court. We 
shall see him doing more jobs in the divorcing line ; 
but thus he finished the first. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 39 

70. The result of this trial was, by this incompara- 
ble judge, made known to the King, whom this won- 
derful hypocrite gravely besought to submit himself 
ivith resignation to the will of God, as declared to him 
in this decision of the spiritual court, acting according 
to the laws of holy Church! The pious and resigned 
King yielded to the admonition; and then Cranmer held 
another court at Lambeth, at which he declared that 
the King had been lawfully married to Anne Boylen; 
and that he now confirmed the marriage by his pastoral 
and judicial authority, which he derived from the suc- 
cessors of the Apostles ! We shall see him, by-and- 
bye, exercising the same authority to declare this new 
marriage null and void from the beginning, and see him 
assist in bastardizing the fruit of it: but we must now 
follow Mrs. Anne Boylen, (whom the Protestant wri- 
ters strain hard to whitewash,) till we have seen the end 
of her. 

71. She was delivered of a daughter, (who was af- 
terwards Queen Elizabeth,) at the end af eight months 
from the date of her marriage. This did not please 
the king, who wanted a son, and who was quite mon- 
ster enough to be displeased with her on this account. 
The couple jogged on apparently without quarrelling 
for about three years, a pretty long time, if we duly 
consider the many obstacles which vice opposes to 
peace and happiness. The husband, however, had 
plenty of occupation; for, being now u Head of the 
Church, 7 '' he had a deal to manage: he had, poor man, 
to labour hard at making a new religion, new articles of 
faith, new rules of discipline, and he had new things 
of all sorts to prepare Besides which he had, as we 
shall see in the next Number, some of the best men in 
his kingdom, and that ever lived in any kingdom or 
country, to behead, hang, rip up, and cut into quarters. 
He had, moreover, as we shall see, begun the grand 
work of confiscation, plunder and devastation. So that 
he could not have a great deal of time for family squab- 
bles. 

72. If, however, he had no time to jar with Anne, he 
had no time to look after her, which is a thing to be 
thought of when a man marries a woman half his own 



40 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

age; and that this " great female reformer" as some of 
the Protestant writers call her, wanted a little of hus- 
band-like vigilance, we are now going to see. The free- 
dom, or rather the looseness, of her manners, so very 
different from those of that virtuous Queen, whom the 
English court and nation had had before them as an ex- 
ample for so many years, gave offence to the more so- 
ber, and excited the mirth and set a-going the chat of 
persons of another description. In January, 1536, 
Queen Catherine died. She had been banished from 
the court. She had seen her marriage annulled by 
Cranmer, and her daughter and only surviving child 
bastardized by act of Parliament; and the husband, 
who had had five children by her, that " reformation" 
husband, had had the barbarity to keep her separated 
from, and never to suffer her, after her banishment, to 
set her eyes on that only child! She died, as she had 
lived, beloved and revered by every good man and wo- 
man in the kingdom, and was buried, amidst the sob- 
bings and tears of a vast assemblage of the people, ia 
the Abbey-church of Peterborough. 

73. The King whose iron heart seems to have bees 
softened, for a moment, by a most affectionate letter, 
which she dictated to him from her death bed, ordered 
the persons about him to wear mourning on the day of 
her burial. But, our famous " great female reformer" 
not only did not wear mourning, but dressed herself 
out in the gayest and gaudiest attire; expressed her un- 
bounded joy; and said that she was now in reality a 
Queen! Alas, for our great "female reformer!" in 
just three months and sixteen clays from this day of her 
exultation, she died herself; not, however, as the real 
Queen had died, in her bed, deeply lamented by all the 
good, and without a soul on earth to impute to her a 
single fault; but, on a scaffold, under a death-warrant 
signed by her husband, and charged with treason, 
adultery and incest ! 

74. In the month of May, 1536, she was, along with 
the King, among the spectators at a tilting-match, at 
Greenwich, when, being incautious, she gave to one 
of the combatants, who was also one of her paramours, 
a sign of her attachment, which seems only to have 



mOTESTANT REFORMATION. 41 

confirmed the King in suspicions which he hefore en- 
tertained. He instantly quitted the place, returned to 
Westminster, ordered her to be confined at. Greenwich 
that night, and to be brought, by water, to Westminster 
the next clay. But, she was met, by his order, on the 
river, and conveyed to the Tower; and, as it were to 
remind her of the injustice, which she had so mainly 
assisted in committing against the late virtuous Queen; 
as it were to say to her, " see, after all, God is just" 
she was imprisoned in the very room in which she had 
slept the night before her coronation! 

75. From the moment of her imprisonment her be- 
haviour indicated any thing but conscious innocence. 
She was charged with adultery committed with four 
gentlemen of the King's household, and with incest with 
her brother, Lord Rochford, and she was, of course, 
charged with treason, those being acts of treason by 
law. They were all found guilty, and all put to death. 
But, before Anne was executed, our friend, Thomas 
Cranmer, had another tough job to perform The 
King, who never did things by halves, ordered, a3 
" head of the church" the Archbishop to hold his " spi- 
ritual court," and to divorce him from Anne! One 
would think it impossible that a man, should have con- 
sented to do such a thing,- should not have perished be- 
fore a slow fire rather than do it. What! he had, we 
have seen in paragraph 70, pronounced the marriage 
with Anne " to be. lawful, and had confirmed it by his 
authority, judicial and pastoral, which he derived from 
the successors of the Apostles." How was he now, 
then, to annul this marriage? How was he to declare 
it unlawful? 

76. He cited the King and Queen to appear in his 
"court I" (Oh! that court!) his citation stated, that 
their marrjage had been unlawful, that they were living 
in adultery, and that, for the " salvation of their souls," 
they should come and show cause why they should not 
be separated. They were just going to be separated 
most effectually; for this was on the 1 7th of May, and 
Anne, who had been condemned to death on the 1.5th, 
was to be, and was, executed on the 19th! They both 
obeyed his citation, and appeared before him by their 

4* 



42 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

proctors; and, after having heard these, Cranmer. 
who, observe, afterwards drew up the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, wound up the blasphemous farce by pro- 
nouncing, " in the name of Christ, and for the honour 
of God" that the marriage " was, and slways had been 
null and void /" Good God! But we must not give 
way to exclamations, or they will interrupt us at every 
step. Thus was the daughter, Elizabeth, bastardized 
by the decision of the very man who had not only pro- 
nounced her mother's marriage lawful, but who had 
been the contriver of that marriage ! And yet Burnet 
has the impudence to say, that Cranmer " appears to 
have done every thing with a good conscience ! Yes, 
with such another conscience as Burnet did the deeds 
by which he got into the Bishoprick of Salisbury, at 
the time of " Old Glorious," which as we shall see, 
was by no means disconnected with the " Reforma- 
tion." 

77. On the 1 9th, Anne was beheaded in the Tower, 
put into an elm-coffin, and buried there. At the place 
of execution she did not -pretend that she was innocent ; 
and there appears to me to be very little doubt of her 
having done some at least of the things imputed to her: 
but, if her marriage with the King had u always been 
null and void .'" that is to say, if she had never been 
married to him, how could she, by her commerce with 
other men, have been guilty of treason ? On the 1 5th, she 
is condemned as the wife of the King, on the 17th, she 
is pronounced never to have been his wife, and, on the 
1 9th, she is executed for having been his unfaithful wife! 
However, as to the effect which this event has upon 
the character of the " Reformation," it signifies not 
a straw whether she were guilty or innocent of the 
crimes now laid to her charge; for, if she were inno- 
cent, how are we to describe the monsters who brought 
her to the block? How are we to describe that 
" Head of the Church" and that Archbishop, who had 
now management of the religious affairs of England? 
It is said, that the evening before her execution, she 
begged the lady of the lieutenant of the Tower to go 
to the Princess Mary, and to beg her to pardon her for 
the many wrongs she had done her. There were 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 48 

others, to whom she had done wrongs. She had been 
the cause, and the guilty cause, of breaking the heart 
of the rightful Queen; she had caused the blood of 
Moore and of Fisher to be shed; and she had been 
the promoter of Cranmer, and his aider and abettor in 
all those crafty and pernicious councils, by acting upon 
which an obstinate and hard-hearted king had plunged 
the kingdom into confusion and blood. The King, in 
order to show his total disregard for her, and, as it 
were, to repay her for her conduct on the day of the 
funeral of Catherine, dressed himself in white on the 
day of her execution; and, the very next day, was 
married to Jane Seymour, at Marevell Hall, ia 
Hampshire. 

78. Thus, then, my friends, we have seen, that the 
thing called the " Reformation" " was engendered in 
beastly lust, and brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy." 
How it proceeded in devastating and in shedding inno- 
eent blood we have yet to see. 



LETTER III, 



Resistance to the King's Measures. 

Effects of abolishing the Pope's Supremacy, 

Death of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, 

Horrible Murders of Catholics. 

Luther and the new Religion. 

Burning of Catholics and Protestants at the 

same Fire. 
Execrable conduct of Cranmer. 
Title of Defender of the Faith. 



Kensington, 31 st January, 1825. 
My Friends, 

79. No Englishman, worthy of that name, worthy 
of a name which carries along with it sincerity and a 
love of justice ; no real Englishman can have contem- 
plated the foul deeds, the base hypocrisy, the flagrant 



44 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

injustice; exposed in the foregoing Letter, without blush- 
ing for his country. What man, with an honourable 
sentiment in his mind, is there, who does not almost 
wish to be & foreigner , rather than to be the countryman 
of Cranmer and of Henry VIII.? If, then, such be 
our feelings already, what are they to be by the time 
that we have got. through those scenes of tyranny, 
blood and robbery, to which the deeds which we have 
already witnessed, were merely a prelude? 

80. Sunk, however, as the country was by the mem- 
bers of the Parliament hoping to share, as they finally 
did, in the plunder of the Church and the poor; selfish 
and servile as was the conduct of the courtiers, the 
king's councillors, and the people's representatives; 
still there were some men to raise their voices against 
the illegality and cruelty of the divorce of Catherine, 
as well as against that great preparatory measure of 
plunder, the taking of the spiritual supremacy from the 
Pope, and giving it to the King. The Bishops, all but 
one, which one we shall presently see dying on the 
scaffold rather than abandon his integrity, were terrified 
into acquiescence, or, at least, into silence. But there 
were many of the parochial clergy, and a large part of 
the monks and friars, who were not thus acquiescent, or 
silent. These, by their sermons, and by their conver- 
sations, made the truth pretty generally known to the 
people at large; and,, though they did not succeed in 
preventing the calamities which they saw approaching, 
they rescued the character of their country from the in- 
famy of silent submission. 

81. Of all the duties of the historian, the most sa- 
cred is that of recording the conduct of those, who have 
stood forward to defend helpless innocence against the 
attacks of powerful guilt. This duty calls on me to 
make particular mention of the conduct of the two/ri- 
«rs, Peyto and Elstow. The former, preaching be- 
fore the king, at Greenwich, just previous to his mar- 
riage with Anne, and, taking for his text the passage in 
the first book of Kings, where Micaiah prophecies 
against Ahab, who was surrounded with flatterers and 
lying prophets, said, " I am that Micaiah whom you 
u will hate, because I must tell you truly that this mar- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 45 

" riage is unlawful; and I know that I shall eat the 
" bread of affliction, and drink the water of sorrow; 
" yet, because our Lord hath put it into my mouth, I 
" must speak it. Your flatterers are the four hundred 
"prophets, who, in the spirit of lying", seek to deceive 
"you. But, take good heed, lest you, being seduced, 
" find Ahab's punishment, which was to have his blood 
" licked up by dogs. It is one of the greatest mise- 
" ries in princes to be daily abused by flatterers." The 
king took this reproof in silence; but, the next Sunday, 
a Dr. Curwin preached in the same place before the 
king, and, having called Peyto dog, slanderer, base, 
beggarly friar, rebel and traitor, and having said that he 
h&djled for fear and shame; Elstow, who was pre- 
sent, and who was a fellow friar of Peyto, called out 
aloud to Curwin, and said: " Good Sir, you know that 
"Father Peyto is now gone to a provincial council at 
" Canterbury, and not fled for fear of you; for, to-mor- 
" row, he will return. In the meanwhile I am here, as 
" another Micaiah, and will lay down my life to prove 
" all those things true, which he hath taught out of Ho- 
" ly Scripture; and to this combat I challenge thee be- 
" fore God and all equal judges; even unto thee Cur- 
" win, I say, which art one of the four hundred false 
" prophets, into whom the spirit of lying is entered, and 
" seekest by adultery to establish a succession, betray- 
" ing the king into endless perdition." 

82. Stowe, who relates this in his Chronicle, says, 
that Elstow "waxed hot, so that they could not 
" make him cease his speech, until the king himself 
bade him hold his peace." The two friars were brought 
the next day before the king's council, who rebuked 
them, and told them, that they deserved to be put into 
a sack, and thrown into the Thames. " Whereupon 
Elstow said, smiling: " threaten these things to rich 
" and dainty persons, who are clothed in purple, fare 
<" deliciously, and have their chiefesthope in the world; 
" for we esteem them not, but are joyful, that for the 
" discharge of our duty we are driven hence: and, with 
" thanks to God, we know the way to heaven to be a~s 
£C ready by water as by land," 



46 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

83. It is impossible to speak with sufficient admira- 
tion of the conduct of these men. Ten thousand victo- 
ries by land or sea would not bespeak so much heroism in 
the winners of those victories as was shown by these 
friars. If the bishops, or only a fourth part of them, 
had shown equal courage, the tyrant would have stop- 
ped in that career which was now on the eve of produ- 
cing so many horrors. The stand made against him by 
these two poor friars was the only instance of bold and 
open resistance, until he had actually got into his mur- 
ders and robberies; and, seeing that there never was 
yet found even a Protestant pen, except the vile pen of 
Burnet, to offer so much as an apology for the deeds 
of this tyrant, one would think that the heroic virtue 
of Peyto and Elstow, ought to be sufficient to make 
us hesitate before we talk of '' monkish ignorance and 
superstition." Recollect that there was no wild fanati- 
cism in the conduct of those men; that they could not 
be actuated by any selfish motive; that they stood for- 
ward in the cause of morality, and in defence of a per- 
son whom they had never personally known, and that, 
too, with the certainty of incurriug the most severe 
punishments, if not death itself. Before their conduct, 
how the heroism of the Hampdens and the Russells 
sinks from our sight! 

84. We now come to the consideration of that copi- 
ous source of blood, the suppression of the Pope's Su- 
premacy. To deny the king's supremacy was made 
high treason, and, to refuse to take an oath, acknow- 
ledging that supremacy, was deemed a denial of it. Sir 
Thomas More, who was the Lord Chancellor, and 
John Fisher, who was Bishop of Rochester, were 
put to death for refusing to take this oath. Of all the 
men in England, these were the two most famed for 
learning, for integrity, for piety, and for long and faith- 
ful services to the king and his father. It is no weak 
presumption in favour of the Pope's supremacy that 
these two men, who had exerted their talents to pre- 
vent its suppression, laid their heads on the block rather 
than sanction that suppression. But, knowing, as we 
do, that it is the refusal of our Catholic fellow subjects 
to take this same oath, rather than take which More 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 47 

and Fisher died; knowing that this is the cause of all 
that cruel treatment which the Irish people have so 
long endured, and to put an end to which ill treatment, 
they are now so ardently struggling; knowing that it is 
on this very point that the fate of England herself may 
rest in case of another war; knowing these things, it 
becomes us to inquire with care what is the nature and 
what are the effects of this papal supremacy, in order 
to ascertain, whether it be favourable, or otherwise, to 
true religion and to civil liberty. 

85. The scripture tells us, that Christ's Church was 
to be ONE. We, in repeating the Apostle's Creed, 
say, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Catho- 
lic, as we have seen in paragraph 3, means universal. 
And how can we believe in an universal church, with- 
out believing that that church is ONE, and under the 
direction of one head? In the gospel of St. John^ 
chap. 10, v. 16, Christ says that he is the good shep- 
herd, and that "there shall be onefold and one shep- 
herd" He afterwards deputes Peter to be the shep- 
herd in his stead. In the same gospel, chap. 17, v. 10 
and 11, Christ says, "And all mine are thine, and thine 
" are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am 
" no more in the world, but they are in the world, and 
M I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine 
" own name those whom thou hast given me, that they 
" may be ONE as we are." Saint Paul, in his second 
epistle to the Corinthians, says, " Finally, brethren, 
" farewell: be perfect, be of good comfort, be of 
« ONE MIND." The same Apostle, in his epistle to 
the Ephesians, chap. 4, v. 3, says, " Endeavouring to 
" keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, 
" There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are call- 
ed in one hope ofvour calling; one lord, ONE 
" FAITH, ONE BAPTISM, one God and Father of 
" all." Again, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, 
chap. 1, v. 10, " Now, I beseech you, brethren, by the 
" name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the 
" same thing, and that there be no divisions amongst 
" you ; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the 
" same mind and the same judgment" 



48 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

86. But, besides these evidences of scripture, besides 
our own creed, which we say we have /row the Apostles, 
there is the reasonableness of the thing. It is perfectly 
monstrous to suppose that there can be TWO true 
faiths. It cannot be : one of the two must be false. And 
will any man say, that we ought to applaud a measure 
which, of necessity, must produce an indefinite number 
of faiths? If our eternal salvation depend upon our 
believing the truth, can it be good to place people in a 
state of necessity to have different beliefs? And does 
not that, which takes away the head of the Church, in- 
evitably produce such a state of necessity? How is 
the faith of all nations to continue to be ONE, if there 
be, in every nation, a head of the Church, who is to be 
appealed to, in the last resort, as to all questions, as to 
all points of dispute, which may arise? How, if this 
be the case, is there to be " one fold and one shepherd?" 
How is there to he " one faith and one baptism?" How 
are the " unity of the spirit and the bond of peace" to 
be preserved? We shall presently see what unity and 
what peace there were in England, the moment that the 
King became the head of the Church. 

87. To give this supremacy to a King is, in our case, 
to give it occasionally to a woman; and still more fre- 
quently to a child, even to a baby. We shall very soon 
see it devolve on a boy, nine years of age, and we shall 
see the monstrous effects that it produced But if his 
present Majesty and all his royal brothers were to die 
to-morrow, (and they are all mortal,) we should see it 
devolve on a little girl only about five years old. She 
would be the " one shepherd ;" she, according to our 
own creed, which we repeat every Sunday, would be 
head of the "Holy Catholic Church!" She would have 
a council of regency. Oh ! then there would be a whole 
troop of shepherds. There must then be pretty " unity 
of spirit" and a pretty "■ bond of peace." 

88. As to the Pope's interference with the authority 
of the King or state, the sham plea set up was, and is, 
that he divided the government with the King, to whom 
belonged the sole supremacy with regard to every thing 
within his realm. This doctrine, pushed home, would 
shut out Jesus Christ himself 3 and make the King an ob- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 49 

ject of adoration. Spiritual and temporal authority 
are perfectly distinct in their nature, and ought so to be 
kept in their exercise; and that, too, not only for the 
sake of religion, but also for the sake of civil liberty. 
It is curious enough that the Protestant sectarians, while 
they most cordially unite with the established Clergy 
in crying out against the Pope for " usurping" the King's 
authority, and against the Catholics for countenancing 
that " usurpation," take special care to deny that this 
same King has any spiritual supremacy over themselves ! 
The Presbyterians have their synod, the Methodists 
their conference, and all the other motley mongrels some 
head or other of their own. Even the " meek" and 
money-making followers of George Fox have their El- 
ders and Yearly Meeting. All these heads exercise an 
absolute power over their members. They give or re- 
fuse their sanction to the appointment of the bawlers; 
they remove them, or break them, at pleasure. We 
have recently seen the Synod in Scotland ordering a 
preacher of the name of Fletcher to cease preaching 
in London. He appears not to have obeyed; but the 
whole congregation has, it seems, been thrown into 
confusion in consequence of this disobedience. Strange 
enough, or, rather, impudent enough, is it, in these 
sects, to refuse to acknowledge any spiritual supre- 
macy in the King, while they declaim against the 
Catholics, because they will not take an oath acknow- 
ledging that supremacy: and is it not, then, monstrous, 
that persons belonging to these sects can sit in Parlia- 
ment, can sit in the King's council, can be generals, or 
admirals, or judges, while from all these posts, and ma- 
ny others, the Catholics are excluded, and that, too, on- 
ly because their consciences, their honourable adherence 
to the religion of their fathers, will not allow them to 
acknowledge this supremacy; but bids them to belong 
to the " one fold and the one shepherd" and to know 
none other than " one Lord, one faith, and one bap- 
tism?" 

89. But the Pope was & foreigner exercising spiritual 

power in England; and this the hypocrites pretended 

was a degradation to the King and country. This was 

something to tickle John Bull, who has, and, I dare 

5 * ! 



50 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

say, always nas had, an instinctive dislike to foreign- 
ers. But, in the first place, the Pope might be an Eng- 
lishman, and we have, in paragraph 42, seen one in- 
stance of this. Then, how could it be a thing degra- 
ding to this nation, when the same thing existed with 
regard to all other nations? Was King Alfred, and 
were all the long line of Kings, for 900 years, degraded 
beings? Did those who really conquered France, not 
by subsidies and bribes, but by arms; did they not un- 
derstand what was degrading, and what was not? Does 
not the present King of France, and do not the present 
French people understand this matter? Are the sove- 
reignty of the former and the freedom of the latter less 
perfect because the papal supremacy is distinctly ac- 
knowledged, and has full effect in France? And if the 
Synod in Scotland can exercise its supremacy in Eng- 
land, and the Conference in England exercise its supre- 
macy in Scotland^ in Ireland, and in the Colonies; if 
this can be without any degradation of King or people, 
why are we to look upon the exercise of the papal su- 
premacy as degrading to either. 

90. Aye; but there was the money. The money of 
England went to the Pope. Popes cannot live, and keep 
courts and ambassadors, and maintain great state with- 
out money, any more than other people. A part of the 
money of England went to the Pope; but a part also of 
that of every other Christian nation took the same di- 
rection. This money was not, however, thrown away. 
It was so much given for the preservation of unity of 
faith, peace, good will and charity, and morality. We 
shall, in the broils that ensued, and in the consequent 
subsidies and bribes to foreigners, soon see that the mo- 
ney which went to the Pope, was extremely well laid 
out. But, how we Protestants strain at a gnat, while 
we swallow camels by whole caravans ! Mr, Perce- 
val gave more to foreigners in one single year than the 
Popes ever received from our ancestors in four centu- 
ries. We have bowed for years to a Dutchman, who 
was no heir to the crown any more than one of our 
workhouse paupers, and who had not one drop of Eng- 
lish blood in his veins; and we now send annually to 
Hanoverians and other foreigners, under the name of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 51 

half-pay, more money than was ever sent to the Pope 
in twenty years. From the time of the u Glorious Re- 
volution," we have been paying* two thousand pounds a 
year to the heirs of u Marshal Schomberg," who 
came over to help the Dutchman; and this is, minci 5 
to be paid as long as there are such heirs of Marshal 
Schomberg, which, to use the elegant and logical and 
philosophical phrase of our great " Reformation" Poet, 
will, I dare say, be "for ever and a day?'' And have 
we forgotten the Bentincks and all the rest of the 
Dutch tribe, who had estates of the Crown heaped up- 
on them: and do we talk, then, of the degradation and 
the loss of money occasioned by the supremacy of the 
Pope ! It is a notorious fact, that not a German soldier 
would have been wanted in this kingdom, during the 
last war, had it not been for the disturbed and dangerous 
state of Ireland, in which the German troops were ve- 
ry much employed. We have long been paying, and 
have now to pay, and shall long have to pay, upwards 
of a hundred thousand pounds a year to the half-pay of- 
ficers of these troops, one single penny of which we 
now should not have had to pay, if we had dispensed with 
the oath of supremacy from the Catholics. Every one 
to his taste; but, for my part, if I must pay fo- 
reigners for keeping me in order, I would rather pay 
u pence to Peter" than pounds to Hessian Grenadiers. 
Mien Priories, the establishment of which was for the 
purpose of inducing learned persons to come and live \ 
in England, have been a copious source of declamatory 
complaint. But leaving their utility out of the question, 
I, for my particular part, prefer Alien Priories to 
Alien Armies, from which latter, this country has never 
been, except for very short intervals, wholly free, from 
the day that the former were suppressed. I wish not 
to set myself upas a dictator in matters of taste; but, I 
must take leave to say, that I prefer the cloister to the 
barrack; the ehauncing of matins to the revilee by the 
drum; the cowl to the brass^fronted hairy cap; the 
shaven crown to the mustachio, though the latter Jbe 
stiffened with black-ball; the rosary, with the cross 
appendant, to the belt with its box of bullets; and, be- 
yond all measure, I prefer the penance to the point of 



62 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

the bayonet. One or the other of these set of things, 
it would seem, we must have; for, before the "Re- 
formation," England knew, and never dreamed, of such 
a thing as a standing soldier ; since that event she has 
never, in reality, known what it was to be without such 
soldiers: till, at last, a thundering standing army, even 
in time of profound peace, is openly avowed to be ne- 
cessary to the " preservation of our happy constitution 
in Church and State!" 

91. However, this money part of the affair is now 
over with regard to the Pope. No one proposes to give 
him any money at all, in any shape whatever. The 
Catholics believe, that the unity of their church would 
be destroyed, that they would, in short, cease to be Ca- 
tholics, if they were to abjure his supremacy; and, there- 
fore, they will not abjure it: they insist that their 
teachers shall receive their authority from him: and 
what, do they, with regard to the Pope, insist upon 
more than is insisted upon and acted upon by the Pres- 
byterians, with regard to their synod? 

92. Lastly, as to this supremacy of the Pope, what 
was its effect with regard to civil libeiiy ; that is to say, 
with regard to the security, the rightful enjoyment, of 
mep's property and lives f We shall, by-and-by, see, 
that civil liberty fell by the same tyrannical hands that 
suppressed the Pope's supremacy. But, whence came 
our civil liberty? Whence came those laws of Eng- 
land, which Lord Coke calls "the birth-right" of 
Englishmen, and which each of the States of America, 
declare, in their constitutions, to be " the birth-right of 
the people thereof ?" Wlience came these laws? Are 
they of protestant origin? The bare question ought to 
make the revilers of the Catholics hang their heads for 
shame. Did protestants establish the three courts and 
the twelve Judges, to which establishment, though, like 
all other human institutions, it has sometimes worked 
evil, England owes so large a portion of her fame and 
her greatness? Oh, no! This institution arose when 
the Pope's supremacy was in full vigour. It was not a 
gift from Scotchmen, nor Dutchmen, nor Hessians; 
from Lutherans, Calvinists, or Hugonots; but was the 
work of our own brave and wise English- Catholic an* 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 53 

cestors: and Chief Justice Abbott is the heir, in an 
unbroken line of succession, to that Bench, which was 
erected by Alfred, who was, at the very same time, 
most zealously engaged in the founding of churches and 
of monasteries. 

93. If however, we still insist that the Pope's su- 
premacy and its accompanying circumstances, produced 
ignorance, superstition and slavery, let us act the part 
of sincere, consistent and honest men. Let us knock 
down, or blow up, the cathedrals and colleges and old 
churches; let us sweep away the three courts, the 
twelve judges, the circuits and the jury-boxes; let us 
demolish all that we inherit from those whose religion 
we so unrelentingly persecute, and whose memory we 
affect so heartily to despise: let us demolish all this 3 
and we shall have left, all our own, the capacious jails 
and penitentiaries; the stock- exchange; the hot and 
ancle and knee-swelling and lung-destroying cotton- 
factories; the whiskered standing army and its splendid 
barracks; the parson-captains, parson-lieutenants, par- 
son-ensigns and parson-justices; the poor-rates and the 
pauper-houses; and, by no means forgetting, that bles- 
sing which is peculiarly and doubly and "gloriously" 
protestant, the NATIONAL DEBT. Ah! people of 
England, how have you been deceived! 

94. But, for argument's sake, counting the experi- 
ence of antiquity for nothing, let us ask ourselves what 
a chance civil liberty can stand, if all power, spiritual 
and lay, be lodged in the hands of the same man. 
That man must be a despot, or his power must be un- 
dermined by an Oligarchy, or by something. If the 
President, or the Congress of the United States, had a 
spiritual supremacy, if they appointed the Bishops and 
Ministers, though they have no benefices to give, and 
would have no tenths and first fruits to receive, their 
government would be a tyranny in a very short time. 
Montesquieu observes, that the people of Spain and 
Portugal would have been absolute slaves, without the 
power of the Church, which is, in such a case, " the 
only check to arbitrary sway." Yet, how long have we 
had " papal usurpation and tyranny" dinned in our 
ears ! This charge against the P.ope surpasseth all m> 

5* 



54 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

derstanding. How was the Pope to be an usurper, or 
tyrant, in England? He had no fleet, no army, no 
judge, no sheriff, no justice of the peace, not even a 
single constable or beadle at his command. We have 
been told of " the thunders of the Vatican" till we 
have almost believed, that the Pope's residence was 
in the skies; and, if we had believed it quite, the 
belief would not have surpassed in folly our belief in 
numerous other stories, hatched by the gentry of the 
" Reformation." The truth is, that the Pope had no 
power but that which he derived from the free will of 
the people. The people were frequently on his side, 
in his contests with kings; and, by this means, they, in 
numerous instances, preserved their rights against 
the attempts of tyrants. If the Pope had no power, 
there must have sprung up an Oligarchy, or a some- 
thing else, to check the power of the king; or, every 
king might have been a Nero, if he would. We shall 
soon see a worse than Nero in Henry ¥111.; we shall 
soon see him laying all law prostrate at his feet; and 
plundering his people, down even to the patrimony of 
the poor. But, reason says that it must be so; and, 
though this spiritual power be now nominally lodged 
in the hands of the king; to how many tricks and con- 
trivances have we resorted, and some of them most dis- 
graceful and fatal ones, in order to prevent him from 
possessing the reality of this power! We are obliged 
to effect by influence and by faction; that is to say, by 
means indirect, disguised, and frequently flagitiously 
immoral, not to say almost seditious into the bargain, 
that which was effected by means direct, avowed, 
frank, honest, and loyal. It is curious enough, that 
while all Protestant ministers are everlastingly talking 
about "papal usurpation and tyranny" all of them, 
except those who profit from the establishment, talk 
not less incessantly about what they have no scruple to 
call, "that two-headed monster Church and State." 
What a monster would it have been, then, if the Catho- 
lics had submitted to the " Veto;" that is to say, to 
give the king a rejecting voice in the appointment of 
Catholic Bishops; and thus to make him, who is al- 
ready " the Defender of the Faith," against which he 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 55 

protests, an associate with the Sovereign Pontiff in 
carrying on the affairs of that church, to which the 
law strictly forbids him to belong! 

95. Thus, then, this so much abused papal suprema- 
cy was a most salutary thing; it was the only check, 
then existing, on despotic power, besides it being ab- 
solutely necessary to that unity of faith, without which 
there could be nothing worthy of the name of a Catho- 
lic Church. To abjure this supremacy was an act of 
apostacy, and also an act of base abandonment of the 
rights of the people. To require it of any man was to 
violate Magna Charta and all the laws of the land; and 
to put men to death for refusing to comply with the re- 
quest, was to commit unqualified murder. Yet, with- 
out such murder, without shedding innocent blood, it 
was impossible to effect the object. Blood must flow. 
Amongst the victims to this act of outrageous tyranny, 
were Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher. The 
former had been the Lord High Chancellor for 
many years. The character given of him by his contem- 
poraries, and by every one to the present day, is that 
of as great perfection for learning, integrity and piety, 
as it is possible for a human being to possess. He was 
the greatest lawyer of his age, a long tried and most 
faithful servant of the king and his father, and was, be- 
sides, so highly distinguished beyond men in general 
for his gentleness and humility of manners, as well as 
for his talents and abilities, that his murder gave a 
shock to all Europe. Fisher was equally eminent in 
point of learning, piety and integrity. He was the 
only surviving privy-councillor of the late king, whose 
mother, (the grandmother of Henry VIII.) having out- 
lived her son and daughter, besought, with her dying 
breath, the young king to listen particularly to the ad- 
vice of this learned, pious and venerable prelate; and, 
until that advice thwarted his brutal passions, he was 
in the habit of saying, that no other prince could boast 
of a subject to be compared with Fisher. He used, at 
the council-board, to take him by the hand and call 
him his father; marks of favour and affection which 
the Bishop repaid by zeal and devotion which knew 
bo bounds other than those prescribed by his duty to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION 56 

t*od, his king, and his country. But, that sacred duty 
bade him object to the divorce and to the king's su- 
premacy; and then the tyrant, forgetting, at once, all 
his services, all his devotion, all his unparalleled attach- 
ment, sent him to the block, after fifteen months of im- 
prisonment, during which he lay, worse than a common 
felon, buried in filth and almost destitute of food; sent 
him, who had been his boast and whom he had called 
his father, to perish under the axe; dragged him forth, 
with limbs tottering under him, his venerable face and 
hoary locks begrimed, and his nakedness scarcely cov- 
ered with the rags left on his body; dragged him thus 
forth to the scaffold, and, even when the life was gone, 
left him to lie on that scaffold like a dead dog! Savage 
monster! Rage stems the torrent of our tears, hurries 
us back to the horrid scene, and bids us look about us 
for a dagger to plunge into the heart of the tyrant. 

96. And yet, the calculating, cold-blooded and bra- 
zen Burnet has the audacity to say, that, "such a man 
as Henry VIII. was necessary to bring about the Reform- 
ation!" He means, of course, that such measures as 
those of Henry were necessary : and, if they were ne- 
cessary, what must be the nature and tendency of that 
« Reformation?" 

97. The work of blood was now begun, and it pro- 
ceeded with steady pace. All who refused to take the 
oath of supremacy; that is to say, all who refused to 
become apostates, were considered and treated as trai- 
tors, and made to suffer death, accompanied with every 
possible cruelty and indignity. As a specimen of the 
works of Burnet's necessary reformer, and to spare 
the reader repetition on the subject, let us take the 
treatment of John Houghton, prior of the Charter- 
house in London, which was then a convent of Carthu- 
sian monks. This prior, for having refused to take the 
oath, which, observe, he could not take without com- 
mitting perjury, was dragged to Tyburn. He was 
scarcely suspended, when the rope was cut, and he fell 
alive on the ground. His clothes were then stripped 
off; his bowels were ripped up; his heart and entrails 
were torn from his body and flung into a fire; his head 
was cut from his body; the body was divided into 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 57 

quarters and parboiled; the quarters were then subdivi- 
ded and hung- up in different parts of the city; and one 
arm was nailed to the wall over the entrance into the 
monastery! 

98. Such were the means, which Burnet says were 
necessary to introduce the proteslant religion into Eng- 
land! How different, alas! from the means by which 
the Catholic religion had been introduced by Pope 
Gregory and Saint Austin ! These horrid butcheries 
were perpetrated, mind, under the primacy of Fox's 
g reat Martyr, Cranmer, and with the active agency of 
another ruffian, named Thomas Cromwell, whom we 
shall soon see sharing with Cranmer the work of plun- 
der, and finally sharing, too, in his disgraceful end. 

99. Before we enter on the grand subject of plunder ? 
which was the mainspring of the "Reformation," we 
must follow the king and his primate through their mur- 
ders of protestants as well as Catholics. But, first, we 
must see how the Protestant religion arose, and how it 
stood at this juncture. Whence the term, Protestant, 
came, we have seen in paragraph 3. It was a name- 
given to those, who. declared, or protested, against the 
Catholic, or universal, church. This work of protest- 
ing was begun in Germany, in the year 1517, by a friar, 
whose name was Martin Luther, and who belonged 
to a convent of Augustin friars, in the electorate of 
Saxony. At this time the Pope had authorized the 
preaching of certain indigencies, and this business 
having been entrusted to the order of Dominicans, and 
not to the order to which Luther belonged, and to 
which it had been usual to commit such trust, here 
was one of the motives from which Luther's opposi- 
tion to the Pope proceeded. He found a protector in 
his sovereign, the Elector of Saxony, who appears to 
have had as strong a relish for plunder as that which 
our English tyrant and his courtiers and parliament 
were seized a few years afterwards. 

100. All accounts agree that Luther was a most 
profligate man. To change his religion he might have 
thought himself called by his conscience; but, con- 
science could not call upon him to be guilty of all the 
abominable deeds, of which he stands convicted evei* 



58 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

by his own confessions, of which I shall speak more 
fully when I come to the proper place for giving an ac- 
count of the numerous sects into which the Protestants 
were soon divided, and of the fatal change which was, 
by this innovation in religion, produced, even according 
to the declaration of the Protestant leaders themselves, 
in the morals of the people and the state of society. 
But, just observing, that the Protestant sects had, at the 
time we are speaking of, spread themselves over a part 
of Germany, and had got into Switzerland and some 
other states of the Continent, we must now, before we 
state more particulars relating to Luther and the sects 
that he gave rise to, see how the king of England 
dealt with those of his subjects who had adopted the 
heresy. 

101. The Protestants immediately began to disagree 
amongst themselves; but, they all maintained, that faith 
alone was sufficient to secure salvation; while the 
Catholics maintained that good works were also neces- 
sary. The most profligate of men, the most brutal 
and bloody of tyrants, maybe a staunch believer; for 
the devils themselves believe; and, therefore, we natu- 
rally, at first thought, think it strange, that Henry VIII. 
did not instantly become a zealous Protestant, did not 
become one of the most devoted disciples of Luther. He 
would, certainly; but Luther began his " Reformation" 
a few years too soon for the king. In 1517, when Lu- 
ther began his works, the king had been married to his 
first wife only eight years ; and he had not then con- 
ceived any project of divorce. If Luther had begun 
twelve years later, the king would have been a Protes- 
tant at once, especially after seeing, that this new reli- 
gion allowed Luther and seven of his brother leaders 
in the " Reformation" to grant, under their hands, a 
license to the Langrave of Hesse to have TWO 
WIVES at one and the same time! So complaisant a 
religion would have been, and, doubtless was, at the 
time of the divorce, precisely to the king's taste; but, 
as I have just observed, it came twelve years too soon 
for him; for, not only had he not adopted this religion, 
but had opposed it; as a sovereign; and, which was a 
still more serious affair, had opposed it as an AU- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 59 

THOR ! He bad, in 1 52 1 , written a BOOK against it. 
His vanity, his pride, were engaged in the contest; to 
which may be added, that Luther, in answering his 
book, had 'called him " a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the 
" spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed 
11 in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and 
" a whorish face;" and had afterwards said to him, " you 
" lie , you stupid and sacreligious king." 

102. Therefore, though the tyrant was bent on de- 
stroying the Catholic Church, he was not less bent on 
the extirpation of the followers of Luther and his tribe 
of new sects. Always under the influence of some self- 
ish and base motive or other, he was, with regard to 
the Protestants, set to work by revenge, as, in the case 
of the Catholics, he had been set to work by lust, if not 
by lust to be gratified by incest. To follow him, step 
by step, and in minute detail, through all his butcheries 
and all his burnings, would be to familiarize one's mind 
to a human slaughter-house and a cookery of cannibals. 
i shall, therefore, confine myself to a general view of his 
works in this way. 

103. His book against Luther had acquired him the 
title of " Defender of the Faith" of which we shall see 
more by-and-by. He could not, therefore, without re- 
cantation, be a Protestant; and, indeed, his pride would 
not suffer him to become the proselyte of a man, who 
had, in print too, proclaimed him to be a pig, an ass, a 
fool, and aliar. Yet he could not pretend to be a Catholic! 
He was, therefore, compelled to make a religion of his 
own. This was doing nothing, unless he enforced its 
adoption by what he called law. Laws were made by 
him and by his servile and plundering parliament, mak- 
ing it heresy, in and condemning to the flames, all who 
did not expressly conform, by acts as well as by decla- 
rations, to the faith and worship, which, as head of the 
Church, he invented and ordained. Amongst his tenets 
there were such as neither Catholics nor Protestants 
could, consistently with their creeds, adopt. He, there- 
fore, sent both to the stake, and sometimes, in order to 
add mental pangs to those of the body, he dragged 
them to the fire on the same hurdle, tied together in 
pairs, back to back, each pair containing a Catholic and 



tit) PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

a Protestant. Was this the way that Saint Austin and 
Saint Patrick propagated their religion ! Yet, such is 
the malignity of Burnet, and of many, many others, 
called Protestant "divines" that they apologize for, if 
they do not absolutely applaud, this execrable tyrant, 
at the very moment that they are compelled to confess 
that he soaked the earth with Protestant blood, and fill- 
ed the air with the fumes of their roasting flesh. 

104. Throughout the whole of this bloody work, 
Cranmer, who was the primate of the king's religion, 
was consenting to, sanctioning, and aiding and abett- 
ing in, the murdering of Protestants as well as Catho- 
lics; though, and I pray you to mark it well, Hume, 
Tillotson, Burnet, and all his long list of eulogists, 
say, and make it matter of merit in him, that, all this 
while, he was himself a sincere Protestant in his heart! 
And, indeed, we shall, by-and-by, see him openly avow- 
ing those very tenets, for the holding of which he . had 
been instrumental in sending, without regard to age or 
sex, others to perish in the flames. The progress of 
this man in the paths of infamy, needed incontestible 
proof to reconcile the human mind to a belief in it. 
Before he became a priest he had married: after he be- 
came a priest, and had taken the oath of celibacy ', he, being 
then in Germany, and having become a Protestant, mar- 
ried another wife, while the first was still alive. Being 
the primate of Henry's Church, which still forbade the 
clergy to have wives, and which held them to their oath 
of celibacy, he had his wife brought to England in a 
chest, with holes bored in it to give her air! As the car- 
go was destined for Canterbury, it was landed at Graves- 
end, where the sailors, not apprised of the contents of 
the chest, set it up on one end, and the wrong end down- 
wards, and had nearly broken the neck of the poor 
frow ! Here was a pretty scene ! A German frow, 
with a litter of half German half English young ones, 
kept, in huggar-muggar, on that spot, which had been 
the cradle of English Christianity; that spot, where 
St. Austin had inhabited, and where Thomas a Beck- 
et had sealed with his blood his opposition to a tyrant, 
who aimed at the destruction of the Church and at the 
pillage of the people! Here is quite enough to fill us 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 61 

with disgust; but, when we reflect, that this same pri- 
mate^ while he had under his roof his frow and her lit- 
ter, was engaged in assisting to send Protestants to the 
flames,- because they dissented from a system that for- 
bade the clergy to have wives, we swell with indigna- 
tion, not against Cranmer, for, though there are so ma- 
ny of his atrocious deeds yet to come, he has exhaust- 
ed our store; not against Hume, for he professed no re- 
gard for any religion at all; but, against those who are 
called " divines" and who are the eulogists of Cran- 
mer; against Burnet, who says, that Cranmer " did 
all with a good conscience >" and against Dr. Sturges, 
or, rather, the Dean and Chapter of Winchester, who 
clubbed their " talents^ in getting up the " Reflections 
on Popery," who talk of the " respectable Cranmer," 
and who have the audacity to put him, in point of in- 
tegrity, upon a level with Sir Thomas More! As Dr. 
Milner, in his answer to Sturges, observes, they re- 
sembled each other in that the name of both was Thom- 
as ; but, in all other things, the dissimilarity was as great 
as that which the most vivid imagination can ascribe to 
the dissimilarity between hell and heaven. 

105. The infamy of Cranmer in assisting in send- 
ing people to the flames for entertaining opinions, 
which he afterwards confessed that he himself enter- 
tained at the time that he was so sending them, can be 
surpassed by nothing of which human depravity is ca- 
pable; and it can be equalledby nothing but that of the 
king, who, while he was, as he hoped and thought, 
laying the axe to the root of the Catholic faith, still 
styled himself its defender! He was not, let it be 
borne in mind, defender of what he might, as others 
have, since his day, and in his day, called the Christian 
Faith. He received the title from the Pope., as a re- 
ward for his written defence of the Catholic faith 
against Luther. The Pope conferred on him this title, 
which was to descend to his posterity. The title was 
given by Pope Leo X. in a bull, or edict, beginning 
with these words: " Leo, servant of the servants of 
"the Lord, to his most dear Son, Henry, King of 
" England, Defender of the Faith, all health and hap- 
" piness." The bull then goes on to say, that the king, 
6 



62 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

having, in defence of the faith of the Catholic Church, 
written a book against Martin Luther, the Pope and 
his council had determined to confer on him and his 
successors the title of Defender of the Faith. " We,'" 
says the bull, " sitting in this Holy See, having, with 
" mature deliberation, considered the business with our 
" brethren, do, with their unanimous council and con- 
" sent, grant unto your Majesty, your heirs and succes- 
" sors, the title of Defender of the Faith; which we 
" do, by these presents, confirm unto you; command- 
u ing all the Faithful to give your Majesty this title." 

106. What are we to think, then, of the man who 
could continue to wear this title, while he was causing 
to be acted before him a farce, in which the Pope and 
his Council were exposed to derision, and was burning, 
and ripping up the bowels, of people, by scores, only 
because they remained firm in that faith of which he 
had still the odious effrontery to call himself the De- 
fender? All justice, every thing like law, every mo- 
ral thought must have been banished before such mon- 
strous enormity could have been suffered to exist. 
They were all banished from the seat of power. An 
iron despotism had, as we shall see, in the next Num- 
ber, come to supply the place of the papal supremacy. 
Civil liberty was wholly gone: no man had any thing 
that he could call property; and no one could look upon 
his life as safe for twenty-four hours. 

107. But, there is a little more to be said about this 
title of Defender of the Faith, which, for some reason 
or other that one can hardly discover, seems to have 
been, down to our time, a singularly great favourite. 
Edward VI., though his two a Protectors," who suc- 
ceeded each other in that office, and whose guilty heads 
we shall gladly see succeeding each other on the block, 
abolished the Catholic faith by law ; though the Pro- 
testant faith was, with the help of Foreign troops, es- 
tablished in its stead, and though the greedy ruffians of 
his time, robbed the very altars, under the pretext of 
extirpating that very faith, of which his title called 
him the Defender, continued to wear this title through- 
out his reign. Elizabeth continued to wear this title, 
during her long reign of " mischief and of misery," as 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 63 

Witaker justly calls it, th(figh, during the whole of 
that reign she was busily engaged in persecuting, in 
ruining, in ripping up the bowels of those who enter- 
tained that faith, of which she styled herself the De- 
fender, in which she herself had been born, in which 
she had lived for many years, and to which she adhered, 
openly and privately, till her self-interest called upon 
her to abandon it. She continued to wear this title 
while she was tearing the bowels out of her subjects 
for hearing mass; while she was refusing the last com- 
forts of the Catholic religion to her cousin, Mary, 
Queen of Scotland, whom she put to death by a mock- 
ery of law and justice, after, as Witaker has fully 
proved, having long endeavoured in vain to find amongst 
her subjects a man base and bloody enough to take her 
victim off by assassination. This title was worn by 
that mean creature, James L, who took as his chief 
councillor the right worthy son of that father who had 
been the chief contriver of the murder of his innocent 
mother, and whose reign was one unbroken series of 
base plots and cruel persecutions of all who professed 
the Catholic faith. But, not to anticipate further mat- 
ter which will, hereafter, find a more suitable place, 
we may observe, that, amongst all our sovereigns, the 
only real Defenders of the Faith, since the reign of 
Mary, have been the late King and his son, our present 
sovereign: the former, by assenting to a repeal of a 
part of the penal code, and by his appointing a special 
commission to try, condemn, and execute the leaders 
of the ferocious mob who set fire to, and who wished 
to sack London in 1780, with the cry of " NO 
POPERY" in their mouths, and from pretended zeal 
for the Protestant religion: and the latter, by his send- 
ing, in 1814, a body of English troops to assist, as a 
guard of honour, at the re-instalment of the Pope. 
Let us hope, that his defence of the faith is not to stop 
here; but that unto him is reserved the real glory of 
being the Defender of the Faith of all his subjects, 
and of healing for ever those deep and festering 
wounds, which, for more than two centuries, have 
been inflicted on so large and so loyal a part of his 
people. 



64 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

108. From the sectarian host no man can say, what 
ought to be expected! but, from the "divines" of the 
established Church, even supposing them dead to the 
voice of justice, one would think, that, when they 
reflect on the origin of this title of their sovereign, 
common decency would restrain their revilings. It is 
beyond all dispute, that the King holds this title from 
the Pope, and from nobody else. His divine right to 
the crown is daily disputed; and he himself has dis- 
claimed it. But, as to Defender of the Faith, he 
owes it entirely to the Pope. Will, then, the Protest- 
ant divines, boldly tell us, that their and our sovereign 
wears a title, which, observe, finds its way, not only 
into every treaty, but into every municipal act, deed, or 
covenant; will they tell us, that he holds this title from 
the "Man of Sin, Antichrist, and the scarlet whore?" 
Will they thus defame that sovereign, whom they, at 
the same time, call on us to honour and obey? Yet 
this they must do; or they must, confess, that their re- 
vilings, their foul abuse of the Catholic Church, have 
all been detestably false. 

109. The King's predecessors had another title. 
They were called Kings of France ; a title of much 
longer standing than that of Defender of the Faith. 
That title, a title of great glory, and one of which we 
were very proud, was not won by "Gospellers," or 
Presbyterians, or New Lights, with Saint Noel or 
Saint Butterworth at their head. It was, along with 
the Three Feathers, which the King so long wore, won 
by our brave Catholic ancestors. It was won while the 
Pope's supremacy; while confessions to priests, while 
absolutions, indigencies, masses, and monasteries ex- 
isted in England. It was won by Catholics in the 
^dark ages of monkish ignorance and superstition." 
It was surrendered in an age enlightened by a a heaven- 
horn" Protestant, and pledge-breaking Minister. It 
was won by valour and surrendered by fear; and fear, 
too, of those whom, for years, we had been taught to 
regard as the basest (as they certainly had been the 
bloodiest) of all mankind. 

110. It would be time now after giving a rapid 
sketch of the progress which the tyrant had made ir* 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 65 

prostrating the liberties of his people, and in despatch- 
ing- more of his wives, to enter on the grand scene of 
plunder, and to recount the miseries which immediately 
followed; but these must be the subject of the nex*. 
Letter. 



LETTER III. 

Horrid Tyranny. Butchery of the Countess 
of Salisbury. 

Celibacy of the Clergy. — Bishops of Winches- 
ter. 

Hume's Charges and Bishop Tanner's Answer, 

Kensington, 28th February, 1825. 
My Friends, 

111. We have seen, then, that the " Reformation^ 
was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypo- 
crisy and perfidy, and we have had some specimens of 
the acts by which it caused innocent blood to be shed. 
We shall now, in this Letter and the next, see how it 
devastated and plundered the country, what poverty 
and misery it produced, and how it laid the sure found- 
ation for that pauperism, that disgracful immorality, that 
fearful prevalence of crimes of all sorts, which now so 
strongly mark the character of this nation, which was 
formerly the land of virtue and plenty. 

112. When, in paragraph 97, we left the King and 
Cranmer at their bloody work, we had come to the 
year 1 536-, and to the 27 th year of the King's reign. 
In the year 1528, an act had been passed to exempt the 
King from paying any sum of money that he might 
have borrowed; another act followed this, for a similar 
purpose; and thus thousands of persons were ruined. 
His new Queen, Jane Seymour, brought him, in 
1537, a son, who was afterwards King, under the title 
of Edward VI.; but the mother died in child-birth, 
and, according to Sir Richard Bakek, "had her body 

6* 



66 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

ripped up to preserve the child!" In this great ■" Re- 
formation" man all was of a piece: all was consistent: 
he seemed never to have any compassion for the suffer- 
ing of any human being; and this is a characteristic 
which Witaker gives to his daughter Elizabeth. 

113. Having a son for a successor, he, with his Par- 
liament, enacted, in 1537, that Mary and Elizabeth^ 
his two daughters, were bastards, and that, in case of a 
want of lawful issue, the King should be enabled, by 
letters patent, or by his last will, to give the crown to 
whomsoever he pleased ! To cap the whole, to com- 
plete a series of acts of tyranny such as was never be- 
fore heard of, it was enacted in 1537, and in the 28th 
year of his reign, that, except in cases of mere private 
right, " the King's Proclamation should be of the same 
" force as acts of Parliament!" Thus, then, all law 
and justice were laid prostrate at the feet of a single 
man, and that man a man with whom law was a mocke- 
ry, on whom the name of justice was a libel, and to 
whom mercy was wholly unknown. 

114. It is easy to imagine that no man's property or 
life could have security with power like this in the 
hands of such a man. Magna Charta had been tram- 
pled under foot from the moment that the Pope's su- 
premacy was assailed. The famous act of Edward 
the Third, for the security of the people against un- 
founded charges of high treason, was wholly set aside. 
Numerous things were made high treason, which were 
never before thought criminal at all. The trials were, 
for a long while, a mere mockery; and, at last, they 
were altogether, in many cases, laid aside, and the ac- 
cused were condemned to death, not only without being 
arraigned and heard in their defence; but, in nume- 
rous cases without being apprized of the crimes, or 
pretended crimes, for which they were executed. We 
have read of Deys of Algiers and of Beys of Tunis; but, 
never have heard of them, even in the most exaggera- 
ted accounts, deeds to be, in point of injustice and cru- 
elty, compared with those of a man, whom Burnett 
calls, " the first-born son of the English "Reformation." 
The objects of his bloody cruelty generally were, as 
they naturally would be, chosen from amongst the tfir- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATIO*: 67 

tuous of his subjects; because from them such a man 
had the most to dread. Of these his axe hewed whole 
families and circles of friends. He spared neither sex 
nor age, if the parties possessed, or were suspected of 
possessing, that integrity which made them disapprove 
of his deeds. To look awry excited his suspicion, and 
his suspicion was death. England, before his blood j 
reign, so happy, so free, knowing so little of crime as 
to present to the judges of assize scarcely three crimi- 
nals in a county in a year, now saw upwards of sixty 
thousand persons shut up in her jails at one and the 
same time. The purlieus of the court of this " first- 
born son of the Reformation" were a great human 
slaughter-house, his people, deserted by their natural 
leaders, who had been bribed by plunder, or the hope 
of plunder, were the terrified and trembling flock, 
while he, the master-butcher, fat and jocose, sat in his 
palace issuing orders for the slaughter, while his High 
Priest, Cranmer, stood re^dy to sanction and to sancti- 
fy all his deeds. 

115. A detail of these butcheries could only disgust 
and weary the reader. One instance, however, must 
not be omitted; namely, the slaughtering of the rela- 
tions, and particularly the mother, of Cardinal Pole. 
The Cardinal, who had, when very young, and before 
the King's first divorce had been agitated, been a great 
favourite with the King, and had pursued his studies 
and travels on the Continent at the King's expense, dis- 
approved of the divorce, and of all the acts that follow- 
ed it; and, though called home by the King, he refused 
to obey. He was a man of great learning, talent, and 
virtue, and his opinions had great weight in England, 
His mother, the Countess of Salisbury, was descend- 
ed from the Plantagenets and was the last living de- 
scendant of that long race of English Kings. So that 
the Cardinal, who had been by the Pope raised to that 
dignity, on account of his great learning and eminent 
virtues, was, thus, a relation of the King, as his mo- 
ther was of course, and she was, too, the nearest of all 
his relations. But, the Cardinal was opposed to the 
King's proceedings; and that was enough to excite and 
put in motion the deadly vengeance of the latter. Many 



68 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

were the arts that he made use of, and great in amount 
was the treasure of his people that he expended, in or- 
der to bring the Cardinal's person within his grasp; and, 
these having failed, he resolved to wreak his ruthless 
vengeance on his kindred and his aged mother. She 
was charged by the base Thomas Cromwell (of 
whom we shall soon see enough) with having persuaded 
her tenants not to read the new translations of the Bible, 
and also with having received bulls from Rome, which, 
the accuser said, were found atCouRDRAY House, her 
seat in Sussex. Cromwell also showed a banner, 
which had, he said, been used by certain rebels in the 
North, and which he said he found in her house. All 
this was, however, so very barefaced, that it was im- 
possible to think of a trial The judges were then 
asked, whether the parliament could not attaint her; 
that is to say, condemn her, icithont giving her a hear- 
ing ? The judges said, that it was a dangerous matter; 
that they could not, in their courts, act in this manner, 
and that they thought the parliament never would. But, 
being asked, whether, if the parliament were to do it, it 
would remain good in law, they answersd in the affirma- 
tive. That was enough. A bill was brought in, and 
thus was the Countess, together with the Marchioness 
of Exeter and two gentlemen, relations of the Cardi- 
nal, condemned to death. The two latter were execu- 
ted, the Marchioness was pardoned, and the Countess 
shut up in prison as a sort of hostage for the conduct of 
her son. In a few months, however, an insurrection 
having broken out on account of his tyrannical acts, 
the king chose to suspect, that the rebels had been in- 
stigated by Cardinal Pole, and, forth he dragged his 
mother to the scaffold. She, who was upwards of sev- 
enty years of age, though worn down in body by her 
imprisonment, maintained to the last a true sense of her 
character and noble descent. When bidden to lay her 
head upon the block: "No," answered she, u my head 
" shall never bow to tyranny; it never committed trea- 
" son; and, if you will have it, you must get it as you 
" can." The executioner struck at her neck with his 
axe, and, as she ran about the scaifold, with her grey 
locks hanging down her shoulders and breast, he pur- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 6$ 

swed, giving her repeated chops, till, at last, he brought 
her down! 

116. Is it a scene in Turkey or in Tripoli that we 
are contemplating? No; but, in England, where Mag* 
na Charta had been so lately in force, where nothing 
could have been done contrary to law; but where all 
power ecclesiastical as well as lay, being placed in the 
hands of one man, bloody butcheries like this, which 
would have roused even a Turkish populace to resist- 
ance, could be perpetrated without the smallest dan- 
ger to the perpetrator. Hume, in his remarks upon 
the state of the people in this reign, pretends, that the 
people never hated the King, and a that he seems even, 
*• in some degree, to have possessed to the last, their 
" love and affection." He adds, that it may be said 
with truth, that the " English in that age, were so tho- 
" roughly subdued, that, like Eastern slaves, they were 
" inclined to admire even those acts of violence and ty- 
" ranny, which were exercised over themselves, and at 
"their own expense." This lying historian every 
where endeavours to gloss over the deeds of those who 
destroyed the Catholic Church, both in England and 
Scotland. Too cunning, however, to applaud the 
bloody Henry himself, he would have us believe, that, 
after all, there was something amiable in him, and this 
belief he would have us found on the fact of his having 
been to tlie last, seemingly beloved by his people. 

117. Nothing can be more false than this assertion, 
if repeated insurrections against him, accompanied 
with the most bitter complaints and reproaches, be not 
to be taken as marks of popular affection. And, as to 
the remark, that the English, " in that age were so tho- 
roughly subdued," while it seems to refute the assertion 
as to their affection for the tyrant, it is a slander, which 
the envious Scotch writers all delight to put forth and 
repeat. One object, always uppermost with Hume, is 
to malign the Catholic religion; it, therefore, did not 
occur to him, that this sanguinary tyrant was not effect- 
ually resisted, as King John and other bad Kings had 
been, because this tyrant had the means of bribing the 
natural leaders of the people to take part against them; 
or, at the least to neutralize those leaders. It did not 



70 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

occur to him to tell us, that Henry VIII. found the 
English as gallant and just a people as his ancestors* 
had found them; but that, having divided them, having 
by holding out to the great an enormous mass of plun- 
der as a reward for abandoning the rights of the peo- 
ple, the people became, as every people without lead- 
ers must become, a mere flock, or herd, to be dealt 
with at pleasure. The malignity and envy of this 
Scotchman blinded him to this view of the matter, and 
induced him to ascribe to the people's admiration of 
tyranny that submission, which, after repeated strug- 
gles, they yielded merely from the want of those lead- 
ers, of whom they were now, for the first time, wholly 
deprived. What? have we never known any country, 
consisting of several millions of people, oppressed and 
insulted, even for ages, by a mere handful of men! 
And, are we to conclude, that such a country submits 
from admiration of the tyranny under which they 
groan? Did the English submit to Cromwell from 
admiration; and, was it from admiration that the 
French submitted to Robespierre? The latter was 
punished, but Cromwell was not: he, like Henry, 
died in his bed; but, to what mind, except to that of 
the most malignant and perverse, would it occur, that 
Cromwell's impunity arose from the willing submis- 
sion and the admiration of the people? 

118. Of the means by which the natural leaders of 
the people were seduced from them; of the kind and the 
amount of the prize of plunder, we are now going to 
take a view. In paragraph 4 I have said, that the 
" Reformation" was cherished and fed by plunder and 
devastation. In paragraph 37 I have said, that it was 
not a Reformation, but a Devastation of England; and 
that this devastation impoverished and degraded the 
main body of the people. These statements I am now 
-about to prove to be true. 

119. In paragraphs from 55 to 60 inclusive, we have 
seen how monasteries arose, and what sort of institu- 
tions they were. There were, in England, at the time 
we are speaking of, 645 of these institutions; besides 
90 Colleges, 110 Hospitals, and 2374 Chanteries and 
Free-Chapels. The whole were seized on, first and 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 71 

last, taken into the hands of the King, and by him grant- 
ed to those who aided and abetted him in the work of 
plunder. 

120. I pray you my friends, sensible and just En- 
glishmen, to observe here, that this was a great mass 
of landed property ; that this property was not by any 
means used for the sole benefit of monks, friars, and 
nuns; that, for the far greater part, its rents flowed im- 
mediately back amongst the people at large; and, that, 
if it had never been an object of plunder, England 
never would, and never could, have heard the hideous 
sound of the words pauper and poor-rate. You have 
seen, in paragraph 52, in what manner the titlies arose 
and how they were disposed of; and you are, by-and- 
by, to see how the rents of the monasteries were dis- 
tributed. 

121. You have without doubt, fresh in your recollec- 
tion, the censures, sarcasms, and ridicule, which we 
have, from our very infancy, heard against the monas- 
tic life. What drones the monks and friars and nuns 
were; how uselessly they lived; how much they con- 
sumed to no good purpose whatever; and particularly 
how ridiculous, and even how wicked it was to compel 
men and women to live unmarried, to lead a life of celi- 
bacy, and, thus, either to deprive them of a great natu- 
ral pleasure, or to expose them to the double sin of 
breach of chastity and breach of oath. 

122. Now, this is a very important matter. It is a 
great moral question; and, therefore, we ought to en- 
deavour to settle this question; to make up our minds 
completely upon it, before we proceed any further. 
The monastic state necessarily was accompanied with 
vows of celibacy; and, therefore, it is, before we give 
an account of the putting down of these institutions in 
Engiaud, necessary to speak of the tendency, and, in- 
deed, of the natural and inevitable consequences of 
those views. 

123. It has been represented as " unnaturaV to com- 
pel men and women to live in the unmarried state, and 
as tending to produce propensities, to which it is hardly 
proper even to allude. Now, in the first place, have 
we heard of late days, of any propensities of this sortr 



72 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

Have they made their odious appearance amongst cler- 
gymen and bishops? And, if they have, have those 
clergymen and bishops been Catholics, or have they 
been Protestants ? The answer, which every one now 
living in England and Ireland, can instantly give to these 
questions, disposes of this objection to vows of celiba- 
cy. In the next place, the Catholic Church compels no- 
body to make such vow. It only says, that it will ad- 
mit no one to be priest, monk, friar, or nun, who re- 
jects such vow. Saint Paul strongly recommends to 
all Christian teachers an unmarried life. The Church 
has founded a rule on this recommendation; and that, 
too, for the same reason that the recommendation was 
given; namely, that those, who have flocks to watch 
over, or, in the language of our own Protestant Church, 
who have the care of souls, should have as few as pos- 
sible of other cares, and should, by all means, be free 
from those incessant, and, sometimes, racking cares, 
which are inseparable from a wife and family. What 
priest, who has a wife and family, will not think more 
about them than about his flock? Will he, when 
any part of that family is in distress, from illness or 
other cause, be wholly devoted, body and mind, to 
his flock? Will he be as ready to give alms, or aid 
of any sort, to the poor, as he would if he had no 
family to provide for? Will he never be tempted to 
swerve from his duty, in order to provide patron- 
age for sons, and for the husbands of daughters? 
Will he always as boldly stand up and reprove the 
Lord or the 'Squire for their oppressions and vices, as 
he would do if he had no son, for whom to get a bene- 
fice, a commission, or a sinecure? Will his wife never 
have her partialities, her tattlings, her bickerings, 
amongst his flock, and never, on any account, induce 
him to act towards any part of that flock contrary to 
the strict dictates of his sacred duty? And, to omit 
hundreds, yes, hundreds, of reasons that might, in addi- 
tion, be suggested, will the married priest be as ready 
as the unmarried one, to appear at the bed-side of sick- 
ness and contagion? Here it is that the calls on him 
are most imperative, and here it is that the married 
priest will, and with nature on his side, be deaf to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 13 

those calls. From amongst many instances that I could 
cite, let me take one. During the war of 177(3, the 
King's house at Winchester was used as a prison for 
French prisoners of war. A dreadfully contagious fever 
broke out amongst tbem. Many of them died. They 
were chiefly Catholics, and were attended in their last 
moments by two or three Catholic Priests residing in 
that city. But, amongst the sick prisoners, there were 
many Protestants ; and these requested the attendance 
of Protestant Parsons. There were the parsons of all 
the parishes at Winchester. There were the Dean 
and all the Prebendaries. But, not a man of them went 
to console the dying Protestants, in consequence of 
which several of them desired the assistance of the 
priests, and of course, died Catholics. Doctor Mil- 
ner, in his Letters to Dr. Stur&es, (page 56,) men- 
tions this matter, and he says, "the answer," (of the 
Protestant parsons,) " 1 understand to have been this: 
" We are not more afraid, as individuals, to face death 
"than the priests are; hut, we must not carry poisonous 
" -contagion into the bosoms of our families." No, to 
be sure! But, then, not to call this the cassock 1 s ta- 
king shelter behind the petticoat, in what a dilemma 
does this place the Dean and Chapter? Either they 
neglected their most sacred duty, and left Protestants 
to flee, in their last moments, into the arms of "popery;" 
or, that clerical celibacy against which they have de- 
claimed all their lives, and still declaim, and still hold 
up to us, their flocks, as something both contemptible 
and wicked, is, after all, necessary to that u care of 
souls " to which the^ profess themselves to have been 
called, and for which they receive such munificent re- 
ward. 

124. But, conclusive, perfectly satisfactory, as these 
reasons are, we should not, if we were to stop here, do 
any thing like justice to our subject; for, as to the pa- 
rochial clergy, do we not see, aye, and feel to, that 
they, if with families, or intending to have families, find 
little time to spare to the poor of their flocks? In 
short, do we not know that a married priesthood and 
pauperism and poor-rates, all came upon this country at 
one and the same moment? And, what was the effect 
7 



74 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

of clerical celibacy with regard to the higher orders of 
the clergy? A bishop, for instance, having neither wife 
nor child, naturally expended his revenues amongst the 
people in his diocese. He expended a part of them on 
his Cathedral Church, or in some other way sent his 
revenues back to the people. If William of Wyr- 
ham had been a married man, the parsons would not now 
have had a College at Winchester, nor would there 
have been a College either at Eton, Westminster, Ox- 
ford, or Cambridge, if the bishops in those days had 
been married men. Besides, who is to expect of hu- 
man nature, that a bishop with a wife and family, will,- 
in his distribution of church preferment, consider no- 
thing but the interest of religion? We are not to ex- 
pect of man more than that, of which we, from expe- 
rience, know that man is capable. It is for the lawgiv- 
er to interpose, and to take care that the community 
suffer not from. the frailty of the nature of individuals, 
whose private virtues even may, in some cases, and those 
not a few, not have a tendency to produce public good. 
I do not say, that married bishops ever do wrong, be- 
cause I am not acquainted with them well enough to as- 
certain the fact; but, in speaking of the diocese, in 
which I was born, and with which I am best acquaint- 
ed, I may say, that it is certain, that, if the late Bishop 
of Winchester had lived in Catholic times, he could not 
have had a wife, and that he could not have had a wife's 
sister, to marry Mr. Edmund Poulter, in which case, 
I may be allowed to think it possible, that Mr. Poul- 
ter would not have quitted the bar for the pulpit, and 
that he would not have had the two livings of Meon- 
Stoke and Sobertonand ^Prebend besides; that his son 
Brownslow Poulter would not have had the two liv- 
ings of Buriton and Petersfield; that his son Charles 
Poulter would not have had the three livings of Alton, 
Binstead and Kingsley; that his son-in-law Ogle would 
not have had the living of Bishop 's Waltham; and 
that his son-in-law Haygarth wt>u1c! not have had 
tbe two livings of Upham and Durley. If the Bish- 
op had lived in Catholic times, he could not have 
had a son Charles Augustus North, to have the 
two livings of Alverstoke and Havant and to be a Pre- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 75 

btnd ; that lie could not have had another son Francis 
North, to have the four livings of Old Alresford, Med- 
stead, New Alresford, and St. Mary's Southampton, 
and to he, moreover, a Prebend and Master of Saint 
Cross ; that he could not have had a daughter to marry 
Mr. William Garnier, to have the two livings of 
Droxford and Brightwell Baldwin, and to be a Prebend 
and a Chancellor besides; that he could not have had 
Mr. William Garnier's brother Thomas Garnier for a 
relation, and this latter might not, then, have had the two 
livings of Aidingbourn and Bishop's Stoke; that he could 
not have another daughter to marry Mr. Thomas de 
Grey, to have the four livings of Calbourne, Fawley, 
Merton, and Rotmton, and to be a Prebend and also an 
Archdeacon besides ! In short, if the late Bishop had 
lived in Catholic times, it is a little too much to believe, 
that these twenty-four livings, five Prebends, one, Chan- 
cellorship, one Archdeaconskip, and one Mastership, 
worth, perhaps, altogether, more than twenty thousand 
pounds a year, would have fallen to the ten persons 
Mhnvennmwl. Ami, may we not reasonably suppose, 
that the Bishop, instead of leaving behind him, (as the 
newspapers told us he did,) savings to nearly the amount 
of three hundred thousand pounds in money, would, if 
lie had had no children nor grand-children, have ex- 
pended a part of this money on that ancient and magni- 
ficent Cathedral, the roof of which has recently been 
in danger of falling in, or, would have been the founder 
of something for the public good and national honour, 
or would have been a most mimiliceiit friend and pro- 
tee lor of the poor, and would never, at any rate, have 
suffered SMALL BEER, TO BE SOLD OUT OF 
HIS EPISCOPAL PALACE AT FARNHAM? with 
m\ excise license, mind you! I do not say, or insinuate, 
that there was any smuggling carried on at the Palace. 
Nor do I pretend to censure the act. A man who hashes 
Urge fatuity to provide for, must be allowed to be the 
best judge of his means; and, if he happen to have an 
overstock of small beer, it is natural enough for him to 
sell it, in order to get money to buy meat, bread, gro- 
ceries, or other necessaries. What I say is, that I cio 
not tl^nk William of Wykjiam ever sold small beer. 



'76 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

either by wholesale or retail; and I most distinctly as- 
sert, that this was done during' the late Bishop's life- . 
time, from his Episcopal palace of Farnham! Wil- 
uam of Wykham, (who took his surname from a little 
village in Hampshire,) was not Bishop of Winchester 
half so long as the late Bishop; but, out of his revenues, 
he built and endowed one of the Colleges at Oxford, 
the College of Winchester, and did numerous other 
most munificent things, in some of which, however, he 
was not without examples in his predecessors, nor with- 
out imitators in his successors as long as the Catholic 
Church remained; but, when a married clergy came, 
then ended all that was munificent in the Bishops of this 
once famous city. 

125. It is impossible to talk of the small beer and of 
the Master of Saint Cross, without thinking of the 
melancholy change which the " Reformation" has pro- 
duced in this ancient establishment. Saint Cross, or 
Holy Cross, situated in a meadow about half a mile 
from Winchester, is an hospital, or place for hospitali- 
ty, founded and endowed by a Bishop of Winchester* 
about seven hundred years ago. Succeeding Bishops 
added to its endowments, till, at last, it provided a re- 
sidence and suitable maintenance for forty-eight decay- 
ed gentlemen, with priests, nurses, and other servants 
and attendants; and, besides this, it made provision for 
a dinner every day for a hundred of the most indigent 
men in the city. These met daily in a hall, called, " the 
hundred metis hall?'' Each had a loaf of bread, three 
quarts of small beer, and "two messes," for his dinner; 
and they were allowed to carry heme that which they 
did not consume upon the spot. What is seen at the 
hospital of Holy Cross now ? Alas ! TEN poor crea- 
tures creeping about in this noble building, and THREE 
out-pensioners; and to those an attorney from Winches- 
ter carries, or sends, weekly, the few pence, whatever 
tiiey may be, that are allowed them! But, the place of 
tie " Master" is, as I have heard, worth a round sum 
annually. I do not know exactly what it is; but, the 
post being a thing given to a son of the Bishop, the 
reader will easily imagine, that it is not a trifle. There 
exists, however, here, that which, as Dr. Milner ob^ 



VllOTESTANT REFORMATION. 77 

serves, is probably, the last remaining vestige of " old 
English hospitality;'''' for here, any traveller who goes 
and knoeks at the gate, and asks for relief, receives 
gratis a pint of good beer and a hunch of good bread. 
The late Lord Henry Stuart told me, that he once went 
and that he received both. 

126. But, (and I had really nearly forgotten it,) 
there is a Bishop of Winchester now I And what is 
he doing? I have not heard, that he has founded, or 
is about to found, any colleges or hospitals. All that I 
have heard of him in the EDUCATION way, is, that, 
in his first charge to his clergy, (which he published,) 
he urged them to circulate amongst their flocks the 
pamphlets of a Society in London, at the head of which 
is Mr. Joshua Watson, wine and spirit merchant, of 
Mincing-lane; and, all I have heard of him in the 
CHARITY way, is, that he is VICE-PATRON of a 
self-created body, called the " Hampshire Friendly So- 
ciety^ the object of which is, to raise subscriptions 
amongst the poor, for " their mutual relief and mainte- 
nance; or, in other words, to induce the poor labourers 
to save out of their earnings the means of supporting 
themselves, in sickness or in old age, tvithout coming for 
relief to the poor-rates ! Good God! Why, William 
of Wykam, Bishop Fox, Bishop Wynefleet, Cardi- 
nal Beaufort, Henry de blois, and, if you take in 
all the Bishops of Winchester, even back to Saint 
S within himself; never would they have thought of a 
scheme like this for relieving the poor ! Their way of 
promoting learning was, to found and endow colleges 
and schools; their way of teaching religion was, to 
build and endow churches and chapels; their way of 
relieving the poor and the ailing, was to found and en- 
dow hospitals: and all these at their own expense; out 
of their own revenues. Never did one of them, in or- 
der to obtain an interpretation of " Evangelical truth" 
for their flocks, dream of referring his Clergy to a So- 
ciety, having a wine and brandy merchant at its head. 
Never did there come into the head of any one of them 
a thought so bright as that of causing the necessitous 
to relieve themselves! Ah! but, they alas! lived in the 
" dark ages of monkish ignorance and superstition" 
7* 



78 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

No wonder that they could not see, that the poor were 
the fittest persons in the world to relieve the poor! 
And, besides, they had no wives and children] No 
sweet babes to smile on, to soften their hearts. If they 
had, their conjugal and paternal feelings would have 
taught them, that true charity begins at home; and that 
it teaches men to sell small beer, and not give it away. 

121. Enough now about the celibacy of the Clergy; 
but, it is impossible to quit the subject without one 
word to Parson Malthus. This man is not only a 
Protestant, but a parson of our Church. Now, he 
wants to compel the labouring classes to refrain to a 
great extent, from marriage; and Mr. Scarlett actu- 
ally brought a Bill into Parliament, having in one part 
of it, this object avowedly in view; the great end, pro- 
posed, by both, being to cause, a diminution of the poor 
rates. Parson Malthus does not call this recommend- 
ing celibacy; but " moral restraint.'^ And, what is 
celibacy but moral restraint ■? So that, here are these 
people reviling the Catholic Church for insisting on 
vows of celibacy on the part of those who choose to 
be priests, or nuns; and, at the same time, proposing to 
compel the labouring classes to live in a state of celiba- 
cy, or to run the manifest risk of perishing, (they and 
their children,) from starvation ! Is all this sheer im- 
pudence, or is it sheer folly? One or the other it is 
greater than ever was heard before from the lips of 
mortal man. They affect to believe, that the clerical 
vow of celibacy must be nugatory, because nature is 
constantly at work to overcome it. This is what Dr. 
Sturges asserts. Now, if this be the case with 
men of education; men on whom their religion imposes 
abstinence, fasting, almost constant prayer, and an end- 
less number of austerities; if this be the case with re- 
gard to such men, bound by a most solemn vow, a known 
breach of which exposes them to indelible infamy; if 
such be the case with such men, and if it be, therefore, 
contemptible and wicked, not to compel them, mind, 
to make such vows, but to permit them voluntarily to 
do it, what must it be to compel young men and women 
labourers to live in a state of celibacy, or be exposed 
to absolute starvation? Why, the answer is, that it is 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 79 

the grossest of inconsistency, or of premeditated wick- 
edness; but that, like all the other wild schemes and 
cruel projects relative to the poor, we trace it at once 
back to the " Reformation" that great source of the 
poverty and misery and degradation of the main body 
of the people of this kingdom. The "Reformation" 
despoiled the working classes of their patrimony; it 
tore from them that which nature and reason had as- 
signed them; it robbed- them of that relief for the ne- 
cessitous, which was theirs by right imprescriptable, 
and which had been confirmed to them by the law of 
G od and the law of the land. It brought a compulso- 
ry, a grudging, an unnatural mode of relief, calculated 
to make the poor and rich hate each other, instead of 
binding them together, as the Catholic mode did by the 
bonds of christian charity. But, of all its conse- 
quences that of intruding a married clergy has, per- 
haps, been the most prolific in mischief. This has ab- 
solutely created an order for the procreation of depend* 
ants on the state ; for the procreation of thousands of 
persons annually, who have no fortunes of their own, 
and who must be, some how or other, maintained by 
burdens imposed upon the people. Places, commis- 
sions, sinecures, pensions; something or other must be 
found for them; some sort of living out of the rents of 
the rich and the wages of labour If no excuse can be 
found; no pretence of public service; no corner of the 
pension list open; then they must come as a direct 
burden upon the people; and, thus it is that we have, 
within the last twenty years, seen sixteen hundred thou- 
sand pounds, voted by the parliament, out of the taxes, 
for the " relief of the poor clergy of the Church of 
England;" and, at the very time that this premium on 
the procreation of idlers was annually being granted, 
the parliament was pestered with projects for compel- 
ling the working part of the community to lead a life 
of celibacy! What that is evil, what that is mon- 
strous, has not grown out of this Protestant " Reforma- 
tion!" 

128. Thus, then, my friends, we have, I think, set- 
tled this great question; and, after all that we have, dur- 
ing our whole lives, heard against that rule of the Ca/ 



80 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

tholic Church, which imposed a vow of celibacy on 
those who chose the clerical or the monastic life, we find, 
whether we look at this rule in a religious, in a moral, 
in a civil, or in a political, point of view, that it was 
founded in wisdom, that it was a great blessing to the 
people at large, and that its abolition is a thing to be 
deeply deplored. 

129. So much, then, for this topic of everlasting rail- 
ing against the Catholic Church. We must, before we 
come to an account of the deeds of the ruffian, Thomas 
Cromwell, who conducted the work of plunder, say 
something in answer to the general charge, which Protest- 
ant writers, and particularly the malignant Scotch his- 
torians, have preferred against the monasteries; for, if 
what they say were true, we might be disposed to think, 
(as, indeed, we have been taught to think,) that there 
was no such harm in the plunderings that we are about 
to witness. We will take this general charge from the 
pen of Hume, who, (vol. 4. p. 160,) speaking of the 
reports made by Thomas Cromwell and his myrmi- 
dons, says, " it is safest to credit the existence of vices 
" naturally connected with tlie very institution of the 
" monastic life. The cruel and inveterate factions and 
" quarrels, therefore, which the commissioners mention- 
" ed, are VERY CREDIBLE among men, who being 
" confined together within the same walls, can never 
" forget their mutual animosities, and who, being cut off 
" from all the most endearing connexions of nature, are 
" commonly cursed with hearts more selfish and tempers 
" more unrelenting, than fall to the share of other men. 
" The pious frauds, practised to increase the devotion 
" and liberality of the people, may be regarded as 
a CERTAIN, in an order founded on illusion, lies, and 
"superstition. The SUPINE IDLENESS also, and 
"its attendant, PROFOUND IGNORANCE, with 
" which the convents were reproached, ADMIT OF 
" NO QUESTION. No manly or elegant knowledge 
" could be expected among men, whose life, condemned 
" to a tedious uniformity, and deprived of all emulation, 
" afforded nothing to raise the mind or cultivate the 
" genius." 

130. I question whether monk ever wrote sentences 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 81 

containing' worse grammar than these contain: but, as 
to the facts ; these "very credible" these "certain" 
these " unquestionable" facts, are, almost upon the face 
of them, a tissue of malignant lies. What should there 
be u factions" and " quarrels" about, amongst men liv- 
ing so " idle" and " unambitious" a life? How much 
harder are the hearts of unmarried than those of mar- 
ried ecclesiastics we have seen above, in the contrast 
between the charities of Catholic and those of Protes- 
tant bishops. It is quite " credible" that men lost in 
" supine idleness" should practice frauds to get money, 
which their very state prevented them from either 
keeping or bequeathing, and who were totally destitute 
of all " emulation." The malignity of this liar exceed- 
ed his cunning, and made him not perceive, that he was, 
in one sentence, furnishing strong presumptive proof 
against the truth of another sentence. Yet, as his his- 
tory has been, and is, much read, and as it has deceiv- 
ed me along with so many thousands of others, I shall 
upon this subject, appeal to several authorities all Protest- 
ants, mind, in contradiction to these his false and base 
assertions, just remarking, by the way, that he himself 
never had a family or a wife, and that he was a great, 
fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public mo- 
ney, without having merited it by any real public ser- 
vices. 

131. In his History of England he refers, not less 
than two hundred times to Bishop Tanner, who was 
Bishop of St. Asaph in the reign of George the Second. 
Let us hear, then, what Bishop Tanner; let us hear 
what this Protestant Bishop says of the character and: 
effects of the monasteries whicti the savages under 
Henry VIII. destroyed. Let us see how this high au- 
thority of Hume agrees with him on this, one of the 
most interesting and important points in our history. 
W e are about to witness a greater act of plunder, a 
more daring contempt of law and justice and humanity, 
than ever was, in any other case, witnessed in the whole 
world. We are going to see thousands upon thousands 
of persons stripped, in an instant of all their property; 
torn from their dwellings, and turned out into the wide 
world to beg or starve; and all this, too, in violation* 



82 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

not only of natural justice, but of every law of the 
country, written and unwritten. Let us, then, see what 
was the character of the persons thus treated, and 
what were the effects of the institutions to which they 
belonged. And, let us see this, not in the description 
given by an avowed enemy, not only of the Catholic, but 
of the Christian religion; but, in that description 
which has been given us by a Protestant Bishop, and in 
a book written expressly to give " an account of all the 
" abbies, priories, and friaries, formerly existing in Eng- 
"land and Wales;" bearing in mind, as we go along, 
that Hume has, in his History of England, referred to 
this very work upwards of two hundred times, taking 
care, however, not to refer to a word of it relating to 
the important question now before us. 

132. Bishop Tanner, before entering on his labo- 
borious account of the several monastic institutions, 
gives us, in pages 19,20, and 21 of his preface, the fol- 
lowing general description of the character and pur- 
suits of the monasteries^ and of the effects of their es- 
tablishments. I beg you, my friends, as you read 
Bishop Tanner's description, the description of Hume 
constantly in your minds. Remember, and look, now- 
and-then, back at his charges of " supine idleness" 
"profound ignorance," want of all "emulation" and all 
61 manly and elegant knowledge;" and, above all things 
remember his charge of selfishness, his charge of 
"frauds" to get money from the people. The Bishop 
speaks, thus, upon the subject. 

133. " In every great abbey there was a large room 
" called the Scriptorium, where several writers made it 
"their whole business to transcribe books for the use of 
" the library. They sometimes, indeed, wrote the lei- 
a ger books of the house, and the missals, and other 
"books used in divine service,, but they were generally 
"upon other works, viz: the Fathers, Classics, Histo- 
"ries, &c. &c. John Whethamsted, abbat of St. Al- 
" bans, caused above eighty books to be thus transcribed, 
" (there was then no printing,) during his abbacy. Fif- 
" ty-eight were transcribed by the care of one Abbat at 
" Glastonbury ; and so zealous were the Monks in gen- 
-'- eral for this work, th at they often got lands given and 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 83 

"churches appropriated for the carrying of it on. In 
" ail the greater abbies, ihere were also persons ap- 
" pointed to take notice of the principal occurrences of 
" tue kingdom, and at the end of every year to digest 
" them into annals. In these records they particularly 
" preserved the memoirs of their founders and bene- 
" factors, the years and days of their births and deaths, 
"their marriages, children and successors; so that re- 
" course was sometimes had to them for proving per- 
" sons' ages and genealogies; though it is to be feared 
"that some of those pedigrees were drawn up from 
"tradition only; and that in most of their accounts 
" they were favourable to their friends and severe upon 
"their enemies. The constitutions of the clergy in 
" their national and provincial synods, and (after the 
" Conquest) even Jlcts of Parliament , were sent to the 
" abbies to be recorded; which leads me to mention the 
u use and advantage of these religious houses. For, 
"FIRST, the choicest records and treasures of the 
" kingdom were preserved in them. An exemplification 
"of the charter of liberties granted by King Henry I. 
"(Magna Charta) was sent to some abbey in every 
" county to be preserved. Charters and Inquisitions re- 
" lating to the county of Cornwall were deposited in 
" the Priory of Bodmin; a great many rolls were lodged 
" in the Abbey of Leicester and Priory of Kenilworth, 
" till taken from thence by King Henry III. King Ed- 
" ward I. sent to the religious houses to search for his ti- 
" tie to the kingdom of Scotland, in their leigers and 
"chronicles, as the most authentic records for proof of 
" Iiis right to that Crown. When his sovereignty was ac- 
" knowledged in Scotland, he sent letters to have it in- 
" serted in the chronicles of the Jlbbey of Winchomh, and 
1 the Priory of Norwich, and probably of many other 
" such-like places. And when he decided the con- 
troversy relating to the crown of Scotland, between 
"Robert Brus and John Baliol, he wrote to the Dean 
" and Chapter of St. Paul's, London, requiring them to 
" enter into their chronicles the exemplification there- 
* " with sent of that decision. The learned Mr. Selden 
" hath his greatest evidences for the dominion of the narrow 
" seas belonging to the King of Great Britain, from Mo- 



84 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" nastic records. The evidences and money of private 
" families were oftentimes sent to these houses to be 
" preserved. The seals of Noblemen were deposited 
" there upon their deaths. And even the King's money 
u was sometimes lodged in them. SECONDLY, they 
" were schools of learning and education; for every con- 
" vent had one person or more appointed for this pur- 
" pose; and all the neighbours, that desired it, might 
" have their children taught grammar and church music 
" without any expense to them. In the Nunneries also 
" young women were taught to work and to read Eng- 
i< -lish, and sometimes Latin also. So that not only the 
" lower rank of people who could not pay for their learn- 
ing, outmost of the noblemen's and gentlemen? 's daugh- 
" ters were educated in those places. — THIRDLY, all 
" the Monasteries were, in effect, great hospitals. And 
" were most of them obliged to relieve many poor peo- 
u ple every day. There were likewise houses of enter- 
" tainment for almost all travellers. Even the nobility 
" and gentry, when they were upon the road, lodged at 
" one religious house, and dined at another, and seldom 
" or never went to inns. In short, their Jtospitality was 
" such, that in the Priory of Norwich, one thousand five 
" hundred quarters of malt, and above eight hundred quar- 
"ters of wheat, and all other things in proportion, were 
" generally spent every year. — FOURTHLY, the nobili- 
" ty and gentry provided not only for their old servants 
" in these houses by corrodies, but for their younger 
" children, and impoverished friends, by making them 
" first monks and nuns, and in time, priors and prioress- 
" es, abbats and abbesses. FIFTHLY, they were of 
"considerable advantage to the Crown: 1. By the pro- 
" fits received from the death of one Abbat or Prior to 
" the election, or rather confirmation of another. 2. By 
" great fines paid for the confirmation of their liberties. 
" 3. By many corrodies granted to old servants of the 
" crown, and pensions to the King's clerks and chaplains, 
"till they get preferment. — SIXTHLY, they were like- 
" wise of considerable advantage to the places where 
"they had their sites and estates: 1. By causing great 
" resort to them, and getting grants and fairs and mar- 
" ketsfor them. 2. By freeing them from the forest laws. 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 85 

u 3. By letting their lands at easy rates. — LASTLY, 
u they were great ornaments to the country ; many of 
u them were really noble buildings; and though not ac- 
" tually so grand and neat, yet, perhaps, as much admir- 
" ed in their times, as Chelsea and Greenwich Hospi- 
" tals are now. Many of the abbey-churches were 
" equal, if not superior to our present Cathedrals ; and, 
<c they must have been as much an ornament to the coun- 
a try, and employed as many workmen in the building 
" and keeping them in repair, as noblemen's and gentle- 
'" men's seats now do." 

134 Now, then, malignant Hume, come up, and face 
this protestant bishop, whose work you have quoted 
more than two hundred times, and who here gives the 
lie direct to all, and to every part, of your "description. 
Instead of your " supine idleness" we have industry the 
most patient and "persevering ;" instead of your '■'-pro- 
found ignorance" we have, in every convent, a school 
for teaching, gratis, all useful sciences; instead of your 
want of all " manly and elegant knowledge ," we have 
the study, the teaching, the transcribing, the preserving, 
of the Classics; instead of your "-selfishness" and your 
" pious frauds," to get money from the people, we have 
hospitals for the sick, doctors and nurses to attend them, 
and the most disinterested, the most kind, the most no- 
ble hospitality; intsead of that u slavery," which, in fifty 
parts of your history, you assert to have been taught 
by the monks, we have the freeing of people from the 
forest laws, and the preservation of the great charlzr of 
English liberty, and you know as well as I, that, when 
this Charter was renewed by King John, the renewal 
was, in fact, the work of Archbishop Langton, who 
roused the Barons to demand it, he having, as Tanner 
observes, found the Charter deposited in an abbey I — 
Back then; down then, malignant liar, and tell the devil 
that the Protestant Bishop Tanner has sent thee ! 

135. Want of room compels me to stop; but, here, 
in this one authority, we have ten thousand times more 
than enough to answer the malignant liar, Hume, and 
all the revilers of the monastic life, which lies and re- 
vilings it was necessary to silence before proceeding, 
as I shall in the next Letter, to describe the base, the 
8 



86 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

cruel, the bloody means by which these institutions 
were devastated and destroyed. 



LETTER V. 

Authorities relating to the effects of the Mon- 
astic Institutions. 

Their great utility, and the political wisdom in 
which they were founded. 

The appointment of the ruffian Thomas Crom- 
well. 

His proceedings in the work of Plunder and 
Devastation. 

The first Act of Parliament authorizing the 
Plunder. 



Kensington, 31st March, 1825, 
My Friends, 

136. When, at the close of the foregoing Letter, I 
appeared to content myself with the authority of the 
Protestant Bishop, Tanner, as a defender of Monastic 
Institutions, against the attacks, the malignant lies of 
Hume, I had in reserve other authorities in abundance, 
some of which I should then have cited, if I had had 
room. Bishop Tanner goes, indeed, quite home to 
every point; but, the matter is of such great importance, 
when we are about to view the destruction of these in- 
stitutions, that, out of fifty authorities that I might re- 
fer to, I will select four or five. I will take one Foreign 
and four English; and, observe, they are all Protestant 
authorities. 

137. Mallet. Eistorij of the Swiss, Vol I. p. 105. — 
" The monks softened by their instructions the ferocious 
" manners of the people, and opposed their credit to the 
" tyranny of the nobility, who knew no other .occupation 
u than war, and grievously oppressed their neighbours. 
u On this account the government df monks was prefer- 
" red to theirs. The people sought them for Judges. It 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 87 

u was an usual saying, that it was better to be governed 
u by the Bishop 9 s crosier than the Monarches sceptre 91 

138. Drake. Literary Hoars, Vol II. p. 435. " The 
" Monks of Cassins, observes Warton, were distin- 
" guished not only for their knowledge of sciences, but 
" their attention to polite learning, and an acquaintance 
" with the Classics. Their learned Abbot Desiderius 
" collected the best Greek and Roman authors. The fra- 
" ternity not only composed learned treatises on *Mu- 
" sic, Logic, Astronomy, and the Vitruvian Architec- 
u ture, but likewise employed a portion of their time in 
" transcribing Tacitus, &c. This laudable example 
"was, in the 11th and 12th centuries, followed with 
" spirit and emulation, by many English monasteries." 

139. Turner. History of England, Vol II. p. 332 
and 361. "No Tyranny was ever established that 
" was more unequivocally the creature of popular 
" will, nor longer maintained by popular support; in no 
" point did personal interest and public welfare more cor- 
" dially unite than in the encouragement of Monaste- 
*< ries." 

140. Bates. Rural Philosophy, p. 322. "It is to be 
" lamented, that, while the Papists are industriously 
" planting Nunneries and other religious Societies in 
" this Kingdom, some good Protestants are not so far ex- 
" cited to imitate their example, as to form establishments 
" for the education and protection of young women of 
" serious disposition, or who are otherwise unprovided, 
" where they might enjoy at least a temporary refuge, 
"be instructed in the principles of religion, and in all 
"such useful and domestic arts, as might qualify them, 
" who were inclined to return into the world, for a pi- 
" ous and laudable discharge of the duties of common 
" life. Thus might the comfort and welfare of many 
" individuals be promoted to the great benefit of society 
a at large, and the interests of Popery, by improving on 
" its own principles, be considerably counteracted. 9 '' 

141. Quarterly Review. December, 1811. " The 
" world has never been so indebted to any other body of 
u men as to the illustrious order of Benedictine Monks ; 
" but historians, in relating the evil of which they were 
* the occasion, too frequently forget the good which 



85 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

"they produced. Even the commonest readers are 
" acquainted with the arch miracle-monger, St. Dun- 
u stan, whilst the most learned of our countrymen 
" scarcely remember the names of those admirable 
"men, who went forth from England, and became the 
" Apostles of the North. Tinian and Juan Fernandez 
" are not more beautiful spots on the Ocean than 
" Malmesbury, Lindisfarne and Jarrow were in the 
" ages of our Heptarchy. A community of pious men, 
" devoted to literature and to the useful arts as well as to 
" religion, seems, in those days like a green Oasis amid 
" the desert. Like stars on a moonless night, they shine 
" upon us with a tranquil ray. If ever there was a man, 
" who could truly be called venerable, it was he, to 
" whom the appellation is constantly fixed, Bede, whose 
" life was passed in instructing his own generation, and 
"preparing records for posterity. In those days, the 
" Church offered the only asylnm from the evils to 
" which every country was exposed — amidst, continual 
" wars, the Church enjoyed peace — it was regarded as 
" a sacred realm by men, who, though they hated one 
" another, believed and feared the same God. Abused 
" as it was by the worldly-minded and ambitious, and 
" disgraced by the artifices of the designing and the 
" follies of the fanatic, it afforded a shelter to those 
" who were better than the world in their youth, or 
"weary of it in their age. The wise as well as the 
" timid and gentle fled to this Goshen of God, which 
" enjoyed its own light and calm, amidst darkness and 
" storms." 

142. This is a very elegant passage; but as Turn- 
er's Protestanism impels him to apply the term " ty- 
ranny" to that which honest feeling bids him say was 
the " creature of the popular will," and was produced 
and upheld by " a cordial union of personal interest 
and public welfare," so the Protestanism of the Re- 
viewers leads them to talk about " evil" occasioned by 
an Order, to whom " the world is more indebted than to 
any other body of men;" and it also leads them to re- 
peat the hacknied charge against St. Dunstan, forget- 
ting, I dare say, that he is one of the Saints in our 
Protestant Church Calendar ! However, here is mora 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 89 

than enough to serve as an answer to the whole herd 
of writers who have put forth their venom against the 
Monastic Orders. 

143. Can we refer to these authorities, can we see 
all the indubitable proofs of the real christian charity 
and benevolence, which were essentially connected 
with the religion of our forefathers, without feeling in- 
dignation against those, who, from our infancy to our 
manhood, have been labouring to persuade us, that the 
Catholic Church produced selfishness, hardness of 
heart, greediness in the clergy, and particularly a want 
of feeling for the poor? Undeniable as is the fact, that 
the " Reformation" robbed the poor of their patrimo- 
ny; clear as we shall, by-and-by, see the proofs of its 
power in creating paupers, and in taking from the high- 
er all compassion for the lower classes, how incessant 
have been the efforts, how crafty the schemes, to make 
us believe precisely the contrary! If the salvation of 
their own souls had been the object they had in view, 
the deceivers could not have laboured with more pains 
and anxiety. They have particularly bent their atten- 
tion to the implanting of their falsehoods in the minds 
of children. The press has teemed, for two centuries 
and more, with cheap books having this object princi- 
pally in view. Of one instance of this sort I cannot 
refrain from making particular mention; namely, a Fa- 
ble in a Spelling Book, by one Fenning, which has 
been in use in England for more than half a century. 
The fable is called: u The priest and the jester." A 
man, as the fable says, went to a " Romish Priest ," and 
asked charity of him. He began by asking for a 
guinea, but lowered the sum till it came to a farthing, 
and still the priest refused. Then the beggar asked 
for " a blessing ," which the priest readily consented to 
give him: "No," said the beggar; " if it were uorth 
but one single farthing, you would not give it to me." 
How indefatigable must have been these deceivers, 
when they could resort to means like these! What 
multitudes of c lildren, how many millions of people 
have, by this book aione had falsehood the most base 
and wicked engraven upon their minds ! 
8* 



SO PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

144. To proceed now with our inquiry relative t& 
the effects of the Monastic Institutions, we may observe, 
that authorities, in this case, seemed necessary. The 
lies were of long standing: hypocritical selfishness, 
backed by every species of violence, tyranny and cru- 
elty, had been at work for ages to delude the people of 
England. Those who had fattened upon the spoils of 
the church, and the poor, and who wished still to en- 
joy the fatness in quiet, naturally laboured to persuade 
the people, that those who had been despoiled were un- 
worthy people; that the institutions, which gave them 
so much property, were, at least, useless ; that the pos- 
sessors were lazy, ignorant, and base creatures, spread- 
ing darkness over the country instead of light; devour- 
ing that which ought to have sustained worthy persons. 
When the whole press and all the pulpits of a country 
are leagued for such a purpose, and supported in that 
purpose by the State; and when the reviled party is, 
by terrors hardly to be described, reduced to silence; 
in such a case, the assailants must prevail; the mass of 
the people must believe what they say. Reason, in 
such a state of things is out of the question. But, 
truth is immortal; and, though she may be silenced 
for a while, there always, at last, comes something to 
cause her to claim her due and to triumph over falsehood, 

145. There is now come that which is calculated to 
give our reasoning faculties fair play. We see the land 
covered, at last, with pauperism, fanaticism and crime. 
We hear an increase of the people talked of as a calam- 
ity ; we hear of projects to check the breeding of the 
people; we hear of Scotch "feelosofers" prowling 
about the country, reading lectures to the manufacturers 
and artisans to instruct them in the science of prevents 
ing their ivives from being mothers; and, in one in- 
stance, this has been pushed so far as to describe, in 
print, the mechanical process for effecting this object I 
In short, we are now arrived at a point which compels 
us to inquire into the cause of this monstrous state of 
things. The immediate cause we find to be the pover- 
ty and degradation of the main body of the people; 
and these, through many stages, we trace back to the 
" Reformation," one of the effects of which was to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 91 

destroy those Monastic Institutions, which, as we shall 
now see, retained the produce of labour in the proper 
places, and distributed it in a way naturally tending to 
make the lives of the people easy and happy. 

146. The authorities that I have cited ought to be of 
great weight in the question; but, supposing there to 
be no- authorities on the side of these institutions, of 
what more do they stand in need than the unfettered 
exercise of our reason? Reason, in such a case, is still- 
better than authorities; but who is to resist both? Let 
us ask, then, whether reason do not reject with disdain 
the slander that has been heaped on the monastic insti- 
tutions. They flourished in England for nine hundred 
years; they were beloved by the people; they were 
destroyed by violence, by the plunderer's grasp, and 
the murderer's knife. Was there ever any thing, vicious 
in itself, or evil in its effects, held in Veneration by a 
whole people for so long a time? Even in our own 
time, we see the people of Spain rising in defence of 
their monasteries; and we hear the Scotch "feeloso- 
fers" abuse them, because they do not like to see the 
property of those monasteries transferred to English 
Jews. 

147. If the Monasteries had been the cause of evil ? 
would they have been protected with such care by so 
many wise and virtuous kings, legislators, and judges? 
Perhaps Alfred was the greatest man that ever lived. 
What writer of eminence, whether poet, lawyer, or 
historian, has not selected him as the object of his 1iigh- 
est praises ? As king, as soldier, as patriot, as lawgiv- 
er, in all his characters he is, by all, regarded as having 
been the greatest, wisest, most virtuous of men. And 
is it reasonable, then, for us to suppose, that he, whose 
whole soul was wrapped up in the hope of making his 
people free, honest, virtuous and happy; is it reasona- 
ble to suppose, that he would have been, as he was, one 
of the most munificent founders of Monasteries, if 
those institutions had been vicious in themselves, or had 
tended to evil? We have not these institutions and 
their effects immediately before our eyes. We do not 
actually see the Monasteries. But we know of ihem 
two things; namel,y, that they were most anxiously 



92 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

cherished by Alfred and his tutor, Saint Swithin; 
and that they were destroyed by the bloody tyrant, 
Henry the Eighth, and the not less bloody ruffian, 
Thomas Cromwell. Upon these two facts alone we 
might pretty safely decide on the merits of these insti- 
tutions. 

148. And w r hat answer do we ever obtain to thjs ar- 
gument? Mr. Mervyn Archdall, in the Preface to 
his History of the Irish Monasteries, says: "When 
"we contemplate the universality of that religious 
" zeal which drew thousands from the elegance and com- 
a forts of society to sequestered solitude and austere 
" maceration; when we behold the greatest and wisest of 
"mankind the dupes of a fatal delusion, and even Jhe 
" miser expending his store to partake in the felicity of 
" mortified ascetics: again, when we find the tide of en- 
" thusiasm subsided, and sober reason recovered from 
" her delirium, and endeavouring, as it were, to demol- 
" ish every vestige of her former frenzy, we have a 
" concise sketch of the history of Monachism, and no 
"common instance of that mental weakness and versatil- 
" ity which stamp the character of frailty on the human 
" species. We investigate these phenomena in the mor- 
" al world with a pride arising from assumed superiority 
" in intellectual powers, or higher degrees of civiliza- 
tion: our vanity and pursuit are kept alive by a com- 
parison so decidedly in favour of modem times." In- 
deed, Mr. Archdall ! And where are we to look for 
the proofs, or signs, of this " assumed superiority ;" this 
" comparison so decidedly in favour of modern timesV* 
Are we to find them in the ruins of those noble edifices, 
of the plunder and demolition of which you give us an 
account? Are we to find them in the total absence of 
even an attempt to ornament your country w T ith any 
thing equal to them in grandeur or in taste? Are we to 
look for his " superiority" in the numerous tithe-bat- 
tles, pistol in hand, like that of Skibbereen? Are mod- 
ern times proved to be " decidedly superior' to former 
times by the law that shuts Irishmen up in their houses 
from sunset to sunrise? Are the people's living upon 
pig-diet, their nakedness, their hunger, their dying by 
hundreds from starvation, while their ports were crowd- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 93 

ed with ships carrying provisions from their shores, 
and while an army was fed in the country ■, the business of 
which army was to keep the starving 'people quiet: are 
these amongst the facts on which you found your "com- 
parison so decidedly in favour of modern times? '' What, 
then, do you look with " PRIDE" to the hall at the Op- 
era-House, for the relief of the starving people of Ire- 
land, the BALL-room " DECORATED with a trans- 
parency exhibiting an Irishman, as large as life, EX- 
" PIRING FROM HUNGER ?" And do you call the 
" greatest and ivisest of mankind" dupes ; do you call 
them " the dupes of a fatal delusion" when they found- 
ed institutions which rendered a thought of Opera- 
house relief impossible ? Look at the present wretch- 
ed and horrible state of your country; then look again 
at your list of ruins; and then, (for you are a church- 
parson, I see,) you will, I have no doubt, say, that 
though the former have evidently come from the latter, 
it was " sober reason" and not thirst for plunder, that 
produced those ruins, and that it was " frenzy and men- 
tal weakness" in the "greatest and wisest of mankind" 
that produced the foundations of which those ruins are 
the melancholy memorials. 

149. The hospitality and other good things proceed- 
ing from the Monasteries, are mentioned by the Protest- 
ant Bishop Tanner, are not to be forgotten; but we 
must take a closer view of the subject, in order to do 
full justice to these calumniated institutions. It is our 
duty to show, that they were founded in great political 
wisdom, as well as in real piety and charity. That they 
were not, as the false and malignant and selfish Hume 
has described them, mere dolers out of bread and meat 
and beer; but that they were great diffusers of general 
prosperity, happiness and content; and that one of their 
natural and necessary effects was, to prevent that state 
of things which sees but two classes of people in a 
community, masters and slaves, a very few enjoying the 
extreme of luxury, and millions doomed to the extreme 
of misery. 

1 50. From the land all the good things come. Some- 
body must own the Land. Those who own it must have 
the distribution of its revenues, If these revenues be 



94 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

chiefly distributed amongst the people, from whose la- 
bour they arise, and in such a way as to afford to them 
a good maintenance on easy terms, the community must 
be happy. If the revenues be alienated in very great 
part; if they be carried away to a great distance, and 
expended amongst those, from whose labour no part of 
them arise, the main body of the community must be 
miserable: poor-houses, jails, and barracks must arise. 
Now, one of the greatest advantages attending the Mon- 
asteries, was, that they, of necessity, caused the reve- 
nues of a large part of the lands of the country to be 
spent on the spot whence those revenues arose. The 
hospitals and all the Other establishments of the kind had 
the same tendency. There were, of the whole, great 
and small, not less on an average, than fifty in each coun- 
ty ; so that the revenues of the land diffused themselves 
in a great part, immediately amongst the people at large. 
We all well know how the state of a parish becomes in- 
stantly changed for the worse, when a noble or other 
great land-owner quits the mansion in it, and leaves that 
mansion shut up. Every one knows the effect such a 
shutting up has upon the poor-rates of a parish. It is 
notorious, that the non-residence of the Clergy and of 
the noblemen and gentlemen is universally complained 
of as a source of evil to the country. One of the ar- 
guments, and a great one it is, in favour of severe game 
laws, is, that the game causes noblemen and gentlemen 
to reside. What, then, must have been the effect of 
twenty rich monasteries in every county, expending 
constantly a large part of their incomes on the spot? 
The great cause of the miseries of Ireland, at this mo- 
ment, is " absenteeship ;" that is to say, the absence of 
the land-owners, who draw away the revenues of the 
country, and expend them in other countries. If Ireland 
had still her seven or eight hundred Monastic institutions, 
great and small, she would be, as she formerly was, 
prosperous and happy. There would be no periodical 
famines and typus fevers ; no need of sun-set and sun- 
rise laws ; no Captain Rocks ; no projects for preventing 
the people from increasing ; no schemes for getting rid of 
a Ci surplus population ;" none of that poverty and de- 
gradation that threaten to make a desert of the country^ 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 95 

or to make it the means of destroying the greatness of 
England herself. 

151. Somebody must own the lands ; and the question 
is, whether it be best for them to be owned by those 
who constantly live, and constantly must live, in the 
country and in the midst of their estates; or, by those 
who always may, and who frequently will and do, live 
at a great distance from their lands, and draw away the 
revenues of them to be spent elsewhere. The monas- 
tics are, by many, called drones. Bishop Tanner has 
shown us, that this charge is very false. But, if it were 
true, is not a drone in a cowl as good as a drone in a 
hat and top-boots? By drones, are meant those who do 
not icork ; and, do land-owners usually work ? The lay 
land-owner and his family spend more of their revenues 
in a way not useful to the people than the monastics pos- 
sibly could. But, besides this, besides tbs hospitality 
and charity of the monastics, and besides, moreover, the 
lien, the legel lien, which the main body of the people 
had, in many cases, to a share, directly or indirectly, 
in the revenues of the Monasteries, we are to look at 
the monks and nuns in the very important capacity of 
landlords and landladies. Ail historians, however Pro- 
testant or malignant, agree, that they were u easy land- 
lords;" that they let their lands at low flents, and on leas- 
es of long term of years; so that, says even Hume, " the 
'" farmers regarded themselves as a species of proprie- 
tors, always taking- care to renew their leases before 
they expired." And, was there no good in a class of 
landlords of this sort? Did not they naturally and ne- 
cessarily create, by slow degrees, men of property ? — . 
Did they not thus cause a class of yeomen to exist, real 
yeomen, independent of the aristocracy? And was not 
this class destroyed by the " Reformation," which made 
the farmers rack-renters and absolute dependants, as we 
see them to this day?. And, was this change favourable 
then, to political liberty f Monastics could possess no 
private property, they could save no money, they could 
bequeath nothing. They had a life interest in their es- 
tate, and no more. They lived, received, and expend- 
ed in common. Historians need not have told us, that 
they were - u easy landlords." They must have been 



98 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

such, unless human nature had taken a retrograde marcb 
expressly for their accommodation. And, was it not 
happy for the nation, that there was such a class of land- 
lords ? What a jump for joy would the farmers of Eng- 
land now give, if such a class were to return to-mor- 
row, to get them out of the hands of the squandering 
and needy lord, and his grinding land-valuer! 

152. Then, look at the monastics as causing, in 
some of the most important of human affairs, that 
fixedness which is so much the friend of rectitude in 
morals, and which so powerfully conduces to pros- 
perity, private and public. The Monastery was a pro- 
prietor that never died; its tenantry had to do with a 
deathless landlord; its lands and houses never changed 
owners; its tenants were liable to none of many of the . 
uncertainties that other tenants were; its oaks had nev- 
er to tremble at the axe of the squandering heir; its 
manors had not to dread a change of lords ; its vil- 
lagers had all been born and bred up under its eye and 
care; their character was of necessity a thing of great 
value, and, as such, would naturally be an object of 
great attention. A monastery was the centre of a cir- 
cle in the country, naturally drawing to it, all that were 
in need of relief, advice, and protection, and containing 
a body of men, 0* of women, having no cares of their 
own, and having wisdom to guide the inexperienced, 
and wealth to relieve the distressed. And was it a 
good thing, then, to plunder and devastate these estab- 
lishments: was it a reformation to squander estates, 
thus employed, upon lay persons, who would not, who 
could not, and did not, do any part or particle of those 
benevolent acts, and acts of public utility, which natu- 
rally arose out of the monastic institutions? 

153. Lastly, let us look at the monasteries as a re- 
source for the younger sons and daughters of the Aris- 
tocracy , and as the means of protecting the government 
against the injurious effects of their clamorous wants. 
There cannot exist an Aristocracy, or body of Nobility, 
without the means, in the hands of the government, of - 
preventing that body from falling into that contempt, 
which is, and always must be, inseparable from Noble- 
poverty. " Well," some will say, " why need there be 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 9? 

•;my such body?" That is quite another question; for 
we have it; and have had it for more than a thousand 
years ; except during a very short interval, at the end 
of which our ancestors eagerly took it back again. I 
must, too, though it really has nothing to do with the 
question before us, repeat my opinion, many times ex- 
pressed, that we should lose more than we should gain 
by getting rid of our Aristocracy.* 



1 54. However, this has nothing at all to do with the 
present question: we have the aristocracy, and we must, 
by a public provision of some sort, for the younger 
branches of it, prevent it from falling into the degra^ 
dation inseperable from poverty. This provision was, 
in the times of which we are speaking, made by the 
Monasteries, which received a great number of its 
monks and nuns from the families of the nobles. This 
rendered those odious and burdensome things, pension 
and sinecures, unnecessary. It, of course, spared the 
taxes. It was a provision that was not degrading to 
the receivers; and it created no grudging and discon- 
tent amongst the people, from whom the receivers took 
nothing. ^Another great advantage arising from this 
mode of providing for the younger branches of the no- 
bility was, that it secured the government against the 
temptation to give offices and to lodge power in unfit Jiands. 
Look at our pension and sinecure list; look at the list of 
those who have commands, and who fill other offices of 
emolument; and you will, at once, see the great benefit 
which must have been derived from institutions, which 
left the government quite free to choose commanders, 
ambassadors, governors, and other persons, to exercise 
power and to be intrusted in the carrying on of the pub- 
lic affairs. These institutions tended, too, to clieck the 
increase of the race of nobles; to prevent the persons 
connected with that order from being multiplied to the 
extent to which they naturally would, otherwise, be 
multiplied. They tended also to make the nobles not 

* The American publisher has taken the liberty to omit a few 
lines here, containing a barefaced libel on the State of Pennsyl- 
vania. 

9 



98 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

so dependant on the crown, a provision being made for 
their poor relations without the crown's assistance; 
and, at the same time, they tended to make the people 
less dependant on the nobles than they otherwise would 
have been. The monasteries set the example, as masters 
and landlords; an example that others were, in a great 
degree, compelled to follow. And thus, all ranks and de- 
grees were benefitted by these institutions, which, with 
malignant historians, have been a subject of endless 
abuse, and the destruction of which they have record- 
ed with so much delight, as being one of the brightest 
features in the "Reformation!" 

1 55. Nor must we, by any means, overlook the ef- 
fects of these institutions on the mere face of the coun- 
try. That soul must be low and mean indeed, which is 
insensible to all feeling of pride in the noble edifices of 
its country. Love of country, that variety of feelings 
which all togetber constitute what we properly call pat- 
riotism, consist in part in the admiration of, and venera- 
tion for, ancient and magnificent proofs of skill and of 
opulence. The monastics built as well as wrote for 
posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions 
set aside, in all their undertakings, every calculation as 
to time and age. Whether they built or planted, they 
set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, 
the honour, the wealth and greatness of generations up- 
on generations yet unborn. They executed every 
thing in the very best manner: their gardens, fish-pondc, 
farms; in all, in the whole of their economy, they set 
-an example tending to make the country beautiful, to 
make it an object of pride with the people, and to 
make the nation truly and permanently' great. Go into 
any county, and survey, even at this day, the ruins of 
its, perhaps, twenty Abbeys and Priories; and, then, 
ask yourself, " what have wein exchange for these?" Go 
to the site of some once-opulent Convent. Look at the 
cloister, now become, in the hands of a rack-renter, 
the recep table for dung, fodder, and faggot- wood: see 
the hall, where, for ages, the widow, the orphan, the 
aged and the stranger, found a table ready spread; see 
a bit of its walls now helping to make a cattle-shed, 
the rest having been hauled away to build a work-house: 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 99 

recognize, in the side of a barn, a part of the once- 
magnificent Chapel: and, if chained to the spot by your 
melancholy musings, you be admonished of the ap- 
proach of night by the voice of the screech-owl, 
issuing from those arches, which once, at the same 
hour, resounded with the vespers of the monk, and 
which have for seven hundred years, been assailed by 
storms and tempests in vain; if thus admonished of the 
necessity of seeking food, shelter, and a bed, lift your 
eyes and look at the white-washed and dry-rotten 
shell on the hill, called the " gentleman's house;" and, 
apprized of the " board-wages'" and the spring-guns, 
suddenly turn your head; jog away from the scene of 
devastation; with " old English Hospitality" in your 
mind, reach the nearest inn, and there, in room half- 
warmed and half-lighted, and with a reception precisely 
proportioned to the presumed length of your purse, sit 
down and listen to an account of the hypocritical pre- 
tences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody 
means, under which, from which, and by which, that 
devastation was effected, and that hospitality banished 
forever from the land. 

156. We have already seen something of these pre- 
tences, motives and acts of tyranny und barbarity; we 
have seen that the beastly lust of the chief tyrant was 
the ground-work of what is called the " Reformation;" 
we have seen that he could not have proceeded in his 
course without the concurrence of the parliament; we 
liave seen, that, to obtain that concurrence, he held out 
to those who composed it a participation in the spoils of 
monasteries ; and, when we look at the magnitude of 
their possessions, when we consider the beauty and fer- 
tility of the spots on which they, in general, were sit- 
uated, when we think of the envy which the love 
borne them by the people must have excited in the 
hearts of a great many of the noblemen and gentlemen; 
when we thus reflect, we are not surprised, that these 
were eager for a " Reformation" that promised to trans- 
fer the envied possessions to them. 

157. When men have power to commit, and are re- 
solved to commit, acts of injustice, they are never at a 
loss for pretences. We shall presently see what were. 



100 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

the pretences under which this devastation of England 
was begun; but, to do the work, their required a work- 
man, as, to slaughter an ox, there requires a butcher. 
To turn the possessors of so large a part of the es- 
tates out of those estates, to destroy establishments 
venerated by the people from their childhood, to set all 
law, divine as well as human, at defiance, to violate ev- 
ery principle on which property rested, to rob the poor 
and helpless of the means of sustenance, to deface the 
beauty of the country, and make it literally a heap of 
ruins; to do these things, there required a suitable 
agent; and that agent the tyrant found in Thomas 
Cromwell, whose name, along with that of Cran- 
mer, ought "to stand for aye accursed in the calen- 
dar." This Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith 
of Putney, in Surrey. He had been an underling of 
some sort in the family of Cardinal Wolsey, and had 
recommended himself to the king by his sycophancy 
to him, and his treachery to his old master. The king 
now became head of the church, and having the supre- 
macy to exercise, had very judiciously provided him- 
self with Cranmer as a primate; and to match him, 
he provided himself with Cromwell, who was equal 
to Cranmer in impiousness and baseness, rather sur- 
passed him in dastardliness, and exceeded him decided- 
ly in quality of rujjian. All nature could not, perhaps^ 
have afforded another man so fit to be the " Royal 
Vicegerent and Vicar-General" of the new head 
of the English Church. 

158. Accordingly, with this character the brutal 
blacksmith was invested. He was to exercise, " all the 
" spiritual authority belonging to the king, for the ad- 
" ministration of justice in all cases touching the eccle- 
"'• siastical jurisdiction, and the godly reformation and 
,u redress of errors, heresies, and abuses in the said 
church." We shall very soon see proofs enough of the 
baseness of this man, for whom ruffian is too gentle a 
term. What chance, then, did the Monasteries stand 
in his hands? He was created a peer. He sat before 
the primate in Parliament, he sat above all the bishops 
in assemblies of the clergy, lie took precedence of all 
the nobles, whether in office or out of office, and, as ia 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 101 

character, so in place, he was second only to the chief 
tyrant himself. 

159. In order to begin the " godly reformation;" that 
is to say, the work of plunder, the " Vicegerent" 
blacksmith set on foot a visitation of the Monasteries \ 
Dreadful visitation! He, active as he was in wicked- 
ness, could not do all the work himself. He, therefore, 
appointed deputies to assist in making this visitation. — • 
The kingdom was divided into districts for this pur- 
pose, and two deputies were appointed to visit each, 
district. The object was to obtain grounds of accusa- 
tion against the monks and nuns. When we consider 
what the object was, and what was the character of the 
man, to whom the work was committed, we may easily 
imagine what sort of men these deputies were. They 
were, in fact, fit to be the subalterns of such a chief. — 
Some of the very worst men in all England; men of no- 
toriously infamous characters; men who had been con- 
victed of henious crimes; some who had actually been 
branded; and, probably, not one man who had not re- 
peatedly deserved the halter. Think of a respectable, 
peaceful, harmless and pious family, broken in upon, all 
of a sudden, by a brace of burglars with murder written 
on their scowling brows, demanding an instant produc- 
tion of their title-deeds, money and jewels; imagine such 
a scene as this, and you have then some idea of the vi- 
sitations of these monsters, who came with the threat 
of the tyrant on their lips, who menaced the victims 
with charges of high treason, who wrote in their re- 
ports, not what was, but what their merciless employers 
wanted them to write. 

160. The monks and nuns, who had never dreamed 
of the possibility of such proceedings, who had never 
had an idea that Magna Charta and all the laws of the 
land could be set aside in a moment, and whose recluse 
and peaceful lives rendered them wholly unfit to 
cope with at once crafty and desperate villany, fell be- 
fore these ruffians as chickens fall before the kite. The 
reports, made by these villains, met with no contradic- 
tion; the accused parties had no means of making a de- 
fence; there was no court for them to appear in; they 
dared not, even if they had had the means, to offer a 
9* 



102 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

defence or make a complaint; for they had seen the hor- 
rible consequences, the burnings, the rippings up, of all 
those of their brethren who had ventured to whisper 
their dissent from any dogma or decree of the tyrant. 
The project was to despoil people of their property ; 
and yet the parties, from whom the property was to he 
taken, were to have no court, in Which to plead their 
cause, no means of obtaining a hearing, could make even 
no complaint but at the peril of their lives. They and 
those who depended on them were to he, at once, strip- 
ped of this great mass of property, without any other 
ground than that of reports, made by men, sent, as the 
malignant Hume himself confesses, for the express pur- 
pose of finding a pretence for the dissolution of the 
Monasteries and for the King's taking to himself proper- 
ly that had never belonged to him or his predecessors. 

161. Hume dares not, in the face of such a multitude 
©f facts that are upon record to the contrary, pretend 
that these reports were true; but, he does his best to put 
gloss upon, as we have seen in paragraph 119. He 
says, in order to effect by insinuation that which he 
does not venture to assert, that " it is, indeed, probable 
M that the blind submission of the people, during those 
" ages, rendered the friars and nuns more unguarded 
Cl and more dissolute than they are in any Roman Catho- 
u lie country at present. ' J Oh! say you so? And why 
more blind than now ? It is just the same religion, there 
are the same rules, the people, if blind then, are blind 
now; and, it would be singular indeed, that, when disso- 
luteness is become more common in the world, the " fri- 
ars and nuns'" should have become more regarded ! — 
However, we have here his acquittal of the Monaste- 
ries of the present day; and that is no small matter. It 
will be difficult, I believe, to make it appear "proba- 
ble" that they were more unguarded, or more dissolute, 
in the 16th century; unless we believe, that the pro- 
found piety (which Hume calls superstition) of the peo- 
ple was not partaken of by the inhabitants of convents. 
Before we can listen to his insinuations in favour of 
these reports, we must believe, that the persons belong- 
ing to the religious communities were a body of cun- 
ning creatures, believing in no part of that religion, 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 103 

which they professed, and we must extend this our be- 
lief even to those numerous communities of women who 
devoted their whole lives to the nursing of the sick poor! 
162. However, upon reports thus obtained, an Act 
of Parliament was passed, in March, 1536, the same 
year that saw the end of Anne Boylen, for the sup- 
pression, that is to say, confiscation of three hundred 
and seventy-six Monasteries, and for granting their es- 
tates real and personal, to the King* and his heirs! He 
took plate, jewels, gold and silver images and ornaments. 
This act of monstrous tyranny was however, base as 
the Parliament was, as full as it was of greedy plunder- 
ers, not passed without some opposition. Hume says, 
that " it does not appear that any opposition was made 
* to this important law." He frequently quoted Spel- 
man as an historical authority; but, it did not suit him 
to quote Spelman's "History of .Sacrilege," in which 
this Protestant historian says, that " the bill stuck long, 
u in the Lower House, and could get no passage, when 
" the King commanded the Commons to attend him in 
U the forenoon in his gallery, where he let them wait till 
w late in the afternoon, and then, coming out of his cham- 
" ber, walking a turn or two amongst them, and looking 
K angrily on them, first on one side, and then on the 
" other, at last, J hear, (saith he,) that my bill will not 
u pass; but, Iwillhave it pass, or I will have some of your 
" lieads ; and without other rhetorick, returned to his 
" chamber. Enough wa& said; the bill passed, and all 
was given him as he desired." 

163. Thus, then, it was an act of sheer tyranny; it 
was a pure Algerine proceeding at last. The pretences 
availed nothing : the reports of Cromwell's myrmidons 
were not credited; every artifice had failed; resort was 
had to the halter and the axe to accomplish that " Re- 
formation," of which the Scotch historian Burnet, has 
called this monster the first-born son ! Some such man, 
he says, was necessary, to bring about this " great and 
glwious event." What! was ever good yet produced 
by wickedness so atrocious? Did any man but this 
Burnet and his countryman Hume, ever affect to be- 
live, that such barefaced injustice and tyranny werejus- 



1Q4 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

tified on the ground of their tending to good consequen- 
ces? 

164. In the next Number, when I shall have an ac- 
count of the whole of that devastation and sacking, of 
which we have, as yet, only seen a mere beginning, I 
shall come to the consequences, not only to the monks 
and nuns, but to the people at large; and shall show how 
a foundation was, in this very Act of Parliament, laid 
for that pauperism, misery, degradation and crime, 
which are now proposed to be checked by laws to ren- 
der the women barren^ or export the people to foreign 
lands. 



LETTER VI. 

Confiscation of the Monasteries. 

Base and cruel Means of doing this. 

The Sacking and Defacing of the Country" 

Breaking up the Tomb of Alfred. 

More Wives Divorced and killed. 

Death of the Miscreant Cromwell. 

Death of the Tyrant himself. 

~^©^- 

Kcnsington, 30th February, I $25. 
My Friends, 

165. At the close of the foregoing Letter, we saw 
the beginning only of the devastation of England. In 
the present Letter, we shall see its horrible progress, 
as far as there was time for that progress during the 
reign of the remorseless tyrant, Henry VIII. We have 
seen in what maimer was obtained the first act for the 
suppression of Monasteries; that is to say, in reality, 
for robbing the proprietors of estates, and also the 
poor and the stranger. But, I must give a more full 
and particular account of the Act of Parliament itself, 
before I proceed to the deeds committed in consequence 
of it 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 105 

166. The Act was passed in the year 1536, and in 
the 27th year of the King's reign The preamble of an 
Act contains the reasons for its enactments; and, as this 
Act, really began the ruin and degradation of the main 
body of the people of England and Ireland; as it was 
the first step taken, in legal form, for robbing the peo- 
ple under pretence of reforming their religion; as it 
was the precedent on which the future plunderers pro- 
ceeded, until they had completely impoverished the 
country; as it was the first of that series of deeds of 
rapine, by which this formerly well-fed and well-cloth- 
ed people have, in the end, been reduced to rags and to 
a worse than jail-allowance of food, I will insert its 
lying and villainous preamble at full length. English- 
men in general suppose, that there were always poor- 
laws and paupers in England. They ought to remem- 
ber, that, for nine hundred years, under the Catholic re- 
ligion, there were neither. They ought, when they 
hear the fat parson cry u no-popery" to answer him by 
the cry of no-pauperism. ," They ought, above all 
things, to endeavour to ascertain, how it came to pass^ 
that this land of roast-beef was changed, all of a sud- 
den, into a land of dry bread, or of oatmeal porridge. 
Let them attend, then, to the base and hypocritical pre- 
tences that they will find in the following preamble to 
this atrocious act of pillage. 

167. ''Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal 
" and abominable living is dayly used and committed 
" commonly in such little and small Abbeys, Priories 
" and other Religious Houses of Monks, Canons and 
" Nuns, where the Congregation of such Religious 
"Persons is under the Number of twelve Persons, 
" whereby the Governors of such Religious Houses, 
" and their Convent, spoyle, destroy e, consume and ut- 
u terly waste, as well their Churches, Monasteries, 
•' Priories, principal Farms, Granges, Lands, Tene- 
•' ments and Hereditaments, as the Ornaments of their 
" Churches, and their Goods and Chattels, to the high 
•' Displeasure of Almighty God, Slander of good Re- 
u ligion, and to the great Infamy of the King's High- 
•'ness, and the Realm, if Redress should not be had 
;; thereof. And albeit that many continual Visitations 



101) PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" hath been heretofore had, by the Space of two hua- 
" dred years and more, for an honest and charitable Re- 
formation of such unthrifty,, carnal and abominable 
" Living, yet nevertheless little or none Amendment is 
"hitherto had, but their vicious Living shamelessly in- 
"creaseth and augmenteth, and by a cursed Custom so 
"rooted and infected, that a great Multitude of the 
" Religious Persons in such small Houses do rather 
" choose to rove abroad in Apostacy, than to conform 
ei themselves to the observations of good Religion; so 
" that without such small Houses be utterly suppressed, 
" and the Religious Persons therein committed to great 
"and honourable Monasteries of Religion in this 
44 Realm where they may be compelled to live reli- 
*f giously for Reformation of their Lives, the same 
. " else be no Redress nor Reformation in that Behalf. 
" In Consideration whereof, the King's most Royal Ma- 
jesty, being Supreme Head on Earth, under God, of 
cc the Church of England, dayly studying and devysing 
"the Increase, Advancement and Exaltation of true 
" Doctrine and Virtue in the said Church, to the only 
" Glory and Honour of God, and the total extirping 
" and Destruction of Vice and Sin, having Knowledge 
"that the Premises be true, as well as the Accompts of 
" his late Visitations, as by sundry credible Informations, 
" considering also that divers and great solemn Montis- 
" teries of this Realm, trherein ( Thanks be to God) Re- 
" ligion is right well kept and observed, be destitute of 
" such full Number of Religious Persons, as they ought 
" and may keep, hath thought good that a plain Decla- 
" ration should be made of the Premises, as well to the 
" Lord's Spiritual and Temporal, as to other his loving 
" Subjects the Commons, in this present Parliament as- 
" sembled. Whereupon the said Lords and Commons, 
" by a great Deliberation, finally be resolved, that it is 
" and shall be much more to the Pleasure of Almighty 
" God, and for the Honour of this his Realm, that the 
" Possessions of such small Religious Houses, now be- 
" ing spent, spoiled and wasted for Increase and Main- 
" tenance of Sin, should be used and committed to bet- 
ter uses, and the unthrifty Religious Persons, s<* 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 107 

- spending the same, to be compelled to reform their 
-Lives." 

168. This preamble was followed by enactments, 
giving tlie whole of the property to the king, his heirs, 
and assigns, " to do and use therewith according to their 
" own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to 
" the honour and profit of this realm.'"' Besides the 
lands and houses and stock, this tyrannical act gave 
him the household goods, and the gold, silver, jewels and 
every other thing belonging to these monasteries. Here 
was a breach of Magna Charta in the first place; a 
robbery of the monks and nuns in the next place; and, 
in the third place, a robbery of the indigent, the wi- 
dow, the orphan and the stranger. The parties rob- 
bed, even the actual possessors of the property were 
never heard in their defence; there was no charge 
against any particular convent ; the charges were loose 
and general, and levelled against all convents, whose 
revenues did not exceed a certain sum. This alone was 
sufficient to show, that the charges were false; for, 
who will believe, that the alleged wickedness extended 
to all \vhos6 revenues did not exceed a certain sum., 
and that, when those revenues got above that point, the 
wickedness stopped? It is clear, that the reason for 
stopping at that point was, that there was yet some- 
thing to be done with the nobles and gentry, before a 
seizure of the great monasteries could be safely at- 
tempted. The weak were first attacked, but means 
were very soon found for attacking and sacking the re- 
mainder. 

169. The moment the tyrant got possession of this 
class of the Church estates, he began to grant them 
away to his a assigns," as the act calls them. Great 
promises had been held out that the king, when in pos- 
session of these estates, would never more want taxes 
from tlie people ; and it is possible, that he thought, that 
he should be able to do without taxes; but, he soon 
found, that he was not destined to keep tlie plunder to 
himself; and that, in short, he must make a sudden 
stop, if not actually undo all that he had done, unless 
he divided the spoil with others, who instantly poured 
in upon him for their shwre, and they so beset him that 



108 » ■ PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

he had got a moment's peace. They knew that he had 
good things; they had taken care to enable him to 
have " assigns ; and they, as they intended from the 
first, would give him no rest, until he, " to the plesasure 
u of Almighty God and to the honour and profit of the 
" realm," made them those " assigns" 

170. Before four years had passed over his head, he 
found himself as poor as if he had never confiscated a 
single convent, so sharp-set were the pious reformers, 
and so eager to " please Almighty God." When com- 
plaining to Cromwell of the rapacity of the appli- 
cants for grants, he exclaimed, " By our Lady, the cor- 
morants, when they have got the garbage, will devour 
the dish " Cromwell reminded him, that there was 
much more yet to come. " Tut, man," said the king, 
"my whole realm would not stanch their maws." How- 
ever, he attempted this, very soon after, by a seizure of 
the larger monasteries. 

171. We have seen, in paragraph 167, that the par- 
liament, when they enabled him to confiscate the small- 
er monasteries, declared, that, in the " great and sol- 
" emn monasteries, (thanks beto God,) religion is right 
"well kept and observed.^ It seemed, therefore, to be 
a work of some difficulty to discover, (in so short a 
time after this declaration was made,) reasons for the 
confiscation of these larger monasteries. But tyranny 
stands in need of no reasons; and, in this case, no rea- 
sons were alleged. Cromwell and his myrmidions 
beset the heads of these great establishments; they 
threatened, they promised, they lied, and they bullied. 
By means the most base that can be conceived, they ob- 
tained from some few what they called a " voluntary 
surrender" However, where these unjust an^ sangui- 
nary men met with sturdy opposition, they resorted to 
false accusations, and procured the murder of the par- 
ties, under pretence of their having committed high 
treason. It was under this infamous pretence that the 
tyrant hanged and ripped up and quartered the Abbot 
of the famous Abbey of Glastonbury, whose body 
was mangled by the executioner, and whose head and 
limbs were hung up on what is called the torre, which 
overlooks the abbey. So that the surrender, wherever 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 109 

it did take place, was precisely of the nature of those 
; * voluntary surrenders 1 ' which men make of their 
purses, when the robber's pistol is at their temple, or 
his blood-stained knife at their throat. 

172. After all, however, even to obtain a pretence of 
voluntary surrender, was a work too troublesome for 
Cromwell and his ruffian visitors, and much too slow 
for the cormorants who waited for the plunder. With- 
out more ceremony, therefore, an act was passed, (31 
Hen. VIII. chap. 13.) giving all these " surrendered" 
monasteries to the king, his heirs and assigns, and also 
ALL OTHER MONASTERIES; and all hospitals and 
colleges into the bargain! It is useless to waste our 
time in uttering exclamations, or in venting curses on 
the memory of the monsters, who thus made a general 
sacking of this their fine, rich and beautiful country, 
which, until now, had been, for nine hundred years, the 
happiest country, and the greatest country too, that Eu- 
rope had ever seen. 

173. The carcass being thus laid prostrate, the ra- 
pacious vultures, who had assisted in the work, fiew on 
it, and began to tear it in pieces. The people'here and 
there, rose in insurrection against the tyrant's satellites; 
but, deprived of their natural leaders, who had, for the 
most part, placed themselves on the side of tyranny 
and plunder, what were the mere common people to 
do ? Hume affects to pity the ignorance of the people, 
(as our stock-jobbing writers now affect to pity the ig- 
norance of the country people in Spain,) in showing 
their attachment to the monks. Gross ignorance, to be 
sure, to prefer easy landlords, leases for life, hospitality 
and plenty; u gross ignorance and superstition''' to pre- 
fer these to grinding rack- rents, buying small beer, at 
Bishops' palaces, and living on parish pay. We shall 
see, shortly, how soon horrid misery followed these ty- 
rannical proceedings; but, we must trace Cromwell 
and his ruffians in their work of confiscating, plunder- 
ing, pillaging and devastating. 

174. Tyrants have often committed robberies on 
their people; but, in all cases hut this, in England at 
least, there was always something of legal process ob- 
served. In this case there was no such thing. The 

10 



110 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

base parliament, who were to share, and who did most 
largely share, in the plunder, had given not only the 
lands and houses to the tyrant, or rather, had taken 
them to themselves; but had disposed, in the same short 
way, of all the moveable goods, stock on farms, crops, 
and, which was of more consequence, of the gold, sil- 
ver and jewels. Let the reader judge of the ransackings 
that now took place. The poorest of the convents had 
some images, vases, and other things, of gold or silver. 
Many of them possessed a great deal in this way. The 
altars of their churches were generally enriched with 
the precious medals, if not with costly jewels; and, 
which is not to be overlooked, the people in those days, 
were honest enough to suffer all these things to remain 
in their places, without a standing army and without po- 
lice officers. 

175. Never, in all probability, since the world began, 
was there so rich a harvest of plunder. The ruffians of 
Cromwell entered the convents; they tore down the al- 
tars to get away the gold and silver; ransacked the chests 
and drawers of the monks and nuns; tore off the covers 
of books that were ornamented with the precious metals. 
These books were all in manuscript. Single books had 
taken, in many cases, half a long life-time to compose and 
to copy out fair. Whole libraries, the getting of which 
together had taken ages upon ages, and had cost im- 
mense sums of money, were scattered abroad by these 
hellish ruffians, when they had robbed the covers of 
their rich ornaments. The ready money, in the con- 
vents down to the last shilling was seized. In short, 
the most rapacious and unfeeling soldiery never, in town 
delivered up to be sacked, proceeded with greediness, 
shamelessness and brutality to be at all compared with 
those of these heroes of the Protestant Reformation; 
and this, observe, towards persons, women as well as 
men, who had committed no crime known to the laws, 
who had had no crime regulary laid to their charge, 
who had had no hearing in their defence, a large part of 
whom had, within a year, been declared, by this same 
parliament, to lead most Godly and useful lives, the 
whole of whose possessions were guaranteed to them 
by the great charter, as much as the king's crown was 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. Ill 

to him, and whose estates were enjoyed for the benefit 
of the poor as well as for that of these plundered posses- 
sors themselves. 

176. The tyrant was, of course, the great pock- 
etter of these species of plunder. Cromwell carried 
or sent it to him in parcels, twenty ounces of gold at one 
time, fifty ounces at another; now a parcel of precious 
stones of one sort, then a parcel of another. Hume, 
whose main object is to blacken the Catholic religion, 
takes every possible occasion for saying something or 
other in praise of its destroyers. He could not, he was 
too cunning, to ascribe justice or humanity to a monster, 
whose very name signifies injustice and cruelty. He, 
therefore, speaks of his high-spirit, his magnificence and 
generosity. It was a high-spirited, magnificent and gen- 
erous king, to be sure, who sat in his palace, in London, 
to receive with his own hands the gold, silver, jewels, and 
pieces of money, of which his unoffending subjects had 
been robbed by ruffians sent by himself to commit the 
robbery. One of the items runs in these words: — " Item, 
" Delivered unto the king's royal Majesty, the same day, 
'■ of the same stuffe, foure chalices of golde, with foure 
u patens of golde to the same; and a spoon of golde weigh- 
" ing all together an hundred and six ounces Received: 
"HENRY REX." 

177. There are high-spirit, magnificence, mid generos- 
ity! Amongst the stock- of this " generous prince's" 
pawnbroker's shop"; or, rather, his storehouse of stolen 
goods, were images of all sorts, candlesticks, sockets, 
cruets, cups, pixes goblets, basins, spoons, diamonds, 
sapphires, pearls, finger-rings, ear-rings, pieces of mo- 
ney of all values, even down to shillings, bits of gold 
and silver torn from the covers of books, or cut and 
beaten out of the altars. In cases where the wood 
work, either of altars, crosses, or images, was inlaid 
with precious metal, the w r ood was frequently burnt to 
get at the metal. Even the Jew-thieves of the present 
day are not more expert at their trade than the myrmi- 
dons of Cromwell were. And, with these facts before 
us; these facts undenied and undeniable; with these 
facts before us, must we not be the most profound hypo-., 
©rites that the world ever saw; must we not be the pre- 



112 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

cise contrary of that which Englishmen have always 
heen thought to be, if we still affect to believe, that the 
destruction of the shrines of our forefathers arose from 
motives of conscience? 

178. The parcel of plunder, mentioned in the last pa- 
ragraph but 'one, brought into this royal Peachum, was 
equal in val'ie to about eight thousand pounds of money 
of the present day; and that parcel was, perhaps, not a 
hundredth part of what he received in this way. Then, 
who is to suppose that the plunderers did not keep a 
large share to themselves? Did subaltern plunderers 
ever give in just accounts? It is manifest that, from 
this specimen, the whole amount of the goods of which 
the convents were plundered must have been enormous. 
The Reforming gentry ransacked the Cathedral Church- 
es, as well as the Convents and their Churches. What- 
ever pile contained the greatest quantity of u the same 
stuffe" seemed to be the object of their most keen rapa- 
city. Therefore, it is by no means surprising, that they di- 
rected, at a very early stage of their pious and honest 
progress, their hasty steps towards Canterbury, which, 
above all other places, had been dipped in the u mani- 
feste synne" of possessing rich altars, tombs, gold and 
silver images, together with "manifestely sinneM" dia- 
monds and other precious stones. The whole of this 
city, famed as the cradle of English Christianity, was 
•prize; and the " Reformation" people hastened to it 
with that alacrity, and that noise of anticipated enjoy- 
ment, which we observe in the crows aud magpies, 
when flying to the spot where a horse or an ox has acci- 
centally met its with death. 

179. But there were, at Canterbury, two objects by 
which the " Reformation" birds of prey were particu- 
larly attracted; namely the monastery of Saint Austin 
and the tomb of Thomas a Becket. The former of 
these renowned men, to whose preaching and whose 
long life of incessant and most disinterested labour Eng- 
land owed the establishment of Christianity in the land, 
had, for eight or nine centuries, heen regarded as the 
Apostle of England. His shrine was in the monastery 
dedicated to him; and as it was, in all respects, a work 
of great magnificence, it offered a plenteous booty totbs 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 113 

plunderers, who, if they could have got at the tomb of 
Jesus Christ himself, and had found it equally rich, 
would, beyond all question, have torn it to pieces. But, 
rich as this prize was, there was a greater in the shrine 
of Thomas a Becket, in the Cathedral Church- Beck- 
et, who was Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of 
Henry II. who resisted that king, when the latter was 
manifestly preparing to rob the Church, and to en- 
slave and pillage the people, had been held in the high- 
est veneration all over Christendom for more than three 
hundred years, when the Reformation plunderers assail- 
ed his tomb; but especially was his name venerated in 
England, where the people looked upon him as a mar- 
tyr to their liberties as well as their religion, he having 
been barbarously murdered by ruffians sent from the king, 
and for no other cause than that he persevered in resist- 
ing an attempt to violate the Great Charter. Pilgrim- 
ages were continually made to his tomb; offerings inces- 
santly poured into it; churches and hospitals and other 
establishments of piety and charity were dedicated to 
him, as, for instance, the church of St. Thomas, in the 
city of London, the Monastery of Sende, in Surry, the 
Hospital of St. Thomas, in the Borough of Souths 
wark, and things of this sort, in great numbers, all 
over the country. The offerings at his shrine had 
made it exceedingly rich and magnificent. A king of 
France had given to it a diamond, supposed to be the 
most valuable then in Europe. Hume, never losing 
sight of the double object of maligning the Catholic 
religion and degrading the English nation, ascribes this 
sort of half-adoration of Becket to the craft of the 
priests and to the folly and superstition of the people. 
He is vexed to death to have to relate, that more than 
a hundred thousand pilgrims to Becket's shrine have 
been assembled at one time in Canterbury. Indeed! 
why, then, there must have been some people living in 
England, even in those old times; and those people 
must have had some wealth too; though, according to 
the whole tenour of the lying book, which the Scotch 
call our history, this was, at the time I am now speak- 
ing of, a poor beggarly, scarcely inhabited country. 
The city of Canterbury does not now contain men, 
10* 



114 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

women, and children, all counted and well puffed out, 
more than twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty 
souls! Poor Souls! How could they find lodging and 
entertainment for a hundred thousand grown persons! 
And this, too, observe, at one corner of the Island. 
None but persons of some substance could have per- 
formed such a journey. Here is a fact that just slips 
out side-ways, which is of itself much more than, 
enough to make us reflect and inquire before we swal- 
low what the Scotch philosophers are now presenting 
to us on the subjects of national wealth and population. 
And, then, as to the craft and superstition which Hume 
says produced this concourse of pilgrims. Just as if 
either were necessary to produce unbounded veneration 
for the name of a man, of whom it was undeniably 
true, that he had sacrificed his life, and that, too, in the 
most signal manner, for the rights and liberties and re- 
ligion of his country. Was it " folly and superstition™ 
or was it wisdom and gratitude and real piety to show, 
by overt acts, veneration for such a man ! The bloody 
tyrant, who had sent Moore and Fisher to the 'block, 
and who, of course hated the name of Becket, caused 
his ashes to be dug up and scattered in the air, and for- 
bade the future insertion of his name in the Calendar. 
We do not, therefore, find it in the Calendar, in the 
Common Prayer Book; but, and it is a most curious 
fact, we find it in Moore's Almanac; in that almanac 
it is for this very year 1825; and thus, in spite of the 
ruthless tyrant, and in spite of all the liars, of the 
Ci Reformation," the English nation has always contin- 
ued to be just and grateful to the memory of this cele- 
brated man. 

180. But, to return to the Reformation robbers; 
here was a prize! This tomb of Becket was of 
wood, most exquisitely wrought, inlain abundantly 
with the precious metals, and thickly set with pre- 
cious stones of all sorts. Here was an object for 
* Reformation" piety to fix its godly eyes upon! 
Were such a shrine to be found in one of our churches 
now, how the swaddlers would cry out for another 
"Reformation!" The gold, silver, and jewels, filled 
two chestSy each of which required six or eight men of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. \\& 

that day, (when the labourers used to have plenty of 
meat,) to move them to the door of the Cathedral! 
How the eyes of Hume's " high-minded, magnificent, 
and generous prince 17 must have glistened when the 
chests were opened ! They vied, I dare say, with the- 
diamonds themselves. No robbers, of which we have 
ever had an account, equalled these robbers in rapaci- 
ty, in profligacy, and in insolence. But, where is the 
wonder? The tyrant's proclamations had now the 
force of laws; he had bribed the people's natural lead- 
ers to his side; his will was law; and that will con- 
stantly sought plunder and blood. 

181. The monasteries were now plundered, sacked, 
gutted; for this last is the proper word whereby to 
describe the deed. As some comfort, and to encourage 
us to endure the horrid relation, we may here bear m 
mind, that we shall, by-and-by, see the base ruffian, 
Cromwell, after being the chief instrument in the 
plunder, laying his miscreant head on the block; but, 
to seize the estates and to pillage the churches and 
apartments of the monasteries was not all. The noble 
buildings raised in the view of lasting for countless- 
ages; the beautiful gardens; these ornaments of the 
country must not be suffered to stand, for, they contin- 
ually reminded the people of the rapacity and cruelty 
of their tyrant and his fellow-plunderers and partakers 
in the plunder. How the property in the estates was 
disposed of we shall see further on: but the buildings 
must come down. To go to work in the usual way 
would have been a labour without end; so that, in most 
instances, GUNPOWDER was resorted to; and thus, 
in a few hours, the most magnificent structures, which 
it had required ages upon ages to bring to perfection, 
were made heaps of ruins, pretty much such as many 
of them remain even unto this day. In many cases, 
those who got the estates were bound to destroy the 
buildings, or to knock them partly down, so that the 
people should, at once, be deprived of all hope of see* 
ing a revival of what they had lost, and in order to give 
them encouragement to take leases under the new owners, 

182. The whole country was thus disfigured; it had 
the appearance of a land recently invaded by the most 



116 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

brutal barbarians; and this appearance, if we look well 
into it, it has even to this day. Nothing has ever yet 
come to supply the place of what was then destroyed. 
This is the view for us to take of the matter. It is not 
a mere matter of religion; but a matter of rights, lib- 
erties, real wealth, happiness and national greatness. 
If all these have been strengthened, or augmented, by 
the " Reformation,'" even then we must not approve 
of the horrible means ; but, if they have all been 
weakened, or lessened by that u Reformation" what an 
outrageous abuse of words is it to call the event by 
that name ! And, if I do not prove, that this latter has 
been the case; if I do not prove, clear as the day-light, 
that, before the " Reformation," England was greater, 
i more wealthy, more moral, and more happy, than she has 
i ever been since; if I do not make this appear as clear- 
ly as any fact ever was made to appear, I will be con- 
tent to pass for the rest of my life, for a vain pre- 
tender. 

183. If I look at the county of Surrey, in which I 
myself was born, and behold the devastation of that 
county, I am filled with indignation against the ruffian 
devastators. Surrey has very little of natural wealth 
in it. A very considerable part of it is mere heath- 
land. Its present comparative opulence is a creature 
of the fictitious system of funding. Yet this county 
was, from one end of it to the other, ornamented and 
benefited by the establishments which grew out of the 
Catholic Church. At Bermondsey there was an Ab- 
bey; at St. Mary Overy there was a Priory, and this 
convent founded that very St. Thomases Hospital which 
now exists in Southwark. This Hospital also was 
seized by the ruffians, but the building was afterwards 
given to the City of London. At Newington there 
was an Hospital, and, after its revenues were seized, 
the master obtained « license to beg! At Merton 
there was a Priory. Then, going across to the Sussex- 
side, there was another Priory at Reigate. Coming 
again near the Thames, and more to the West, there 
was a Priory at Shene. Still more to the West, there 
was an Abbey at Chertsey. At Tandrige there was 
at Priory. Near Guildforde, at Sende, there was a 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 117 

Priory, And, at the lower end of the county, at Wa- 
verly, in the parish of Farnham, was an Abbey. To 
these belonged cells and chapels at a distance from the con- 
vents themselves: so that it would have been a work of 
some difficulty for a man to place himself, even in this 
poor, heathy county, at six miles distance from a place 
where the door of hospitality was always open to the 
poor, to the aged, the orphan, the widow, anjd the 
stranger. Can any man now place himself, in that 
whole county, within any number of miles of any such 
door? No-, nor in any other county. All is whol- 
ly changed, and all is changed for the worse. There 
is now no hospitality in England. Words have chang- 
ed their meaning. We now give entertainment to 
those who entertain us in return We entertain 
people because we like them personally ; and, very 
seldom, because they stand in need of entertain- 
ment. An hospital, in those days, meant a place of 
free entertainment; and not a place merely for the lame, 
the sick and the blind; and the very sound of tha words, 
u Old English Hospitality," ought to raise a blush on 
every Protestant, cheek. But, besides this hospitality- 
exercised, invariably in the monasteries, the weight of 
their example was great with all the opulent classes of 
the community; and thus, to be generous and kind was 
the character of the nation at large: a niggardly, a 
base, a money-loving disposition could not be in fash- 
ion, when those institutions to which all men looked 
with reverence, .set an example which condemned such 
a disposition. 

184- And, if I am asked why the thirteen monks of 
Waverly, for instance, should have had 1 96Z. 13s. 1 Id. 
a year to spend, making about four thousand pounds a 
year of the money of the present day, I may answer by 
asking, why they should not have had it? And, I may 
go on, and ask, why any body should have any proper- 
ty at all? Aye, but, they never worked; they did no- 
thing to increase the nations store? Let us see how 
this is. They possessed the lands of Waverley, a 
few hundred acres of very poor land, with a mill, and, 
perhaps, about twenty acres of very indifferent meadow- 
land, on one part of which, sheltered by a semicircle 



118 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

of sand hills, their Abbey stood, the river Wey, (about 
twenty feet wide,) running close by the outer wall of 
the convent. Besides this they possessed the impro- 
priated tithes of the parish of Farnham, and a pond or 
two on the commons adjoining. This estate in land be- 
longs to a Mr. Thompson, who lives on the spot, and 
the estate in tithes to a Mr. Halsey, who lives at a dis- 
tance, from the parish. Now, without any disparage- 
ment to these gentlemen, did not the monks work as 
they do? Did not their revenue go to augment the na- 
tion's store as much as the rents of Mr. Thompson, or 
the tithes of Mr. Halsey? Aye, and which is of vast 
importance, the poor of the parish of Farnham, having 
this monastery to apply to, and having for their neigh- 
bour a bishop of Winchester, who did not sell small 
beer out of his palace, stood in no need of poor rates, 
and had never heard the horrid word pauper pronoun- 
ced. Come, my townsmen of Farnham, you, who, as 
well as I have, when we were boys, climbed the ivy- 
covered ruins of this venerable Abbey, (the first of its 
order in England;) you, who as well as I have, when 
looking at those walls, which have out-lived the memo- 
ry of the devastators, but not the malice of those who 
still taste the sweets of the devastation; you, who, as 
well as I, have many times wondered what an Abbey 
was, and how and why this one came to be devastated; 
you shall be the judge in this matter. You know what 
poor-rates are, and you know what church-rates are. 
Very well, then, there were no poor-rates and no church- 
rates as long as Waverley Abbey existed, and as long 
as Bishops had no wives. This is a fact wholly unde- 
niable. There was no need of either. The Church 
shared its property with the poor and the stranger, and 
left the people at large to possess their own earnings. 
And, as to matters of faith and worship, look at that im- 
mense heap of earth round the church, where your pa- 
rents and my parents, and where our progenitors, for 
twelve hundred years, lie buried, then, bear in mind, 
that for nine hundred years Out of the twelve, they 
were all of the faith and worship of the monks of Wa- 
verley; and, with that thought in your mind, find, if you 
«an, the keart to say, that the monks of Waverley, by 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 119 

whose hospitality your fathers and my fathers were, 
for so many ages, preserved from bearing the hateful 
name of pauper, taught an idolatrous and damnable re- 
ligion. 

185. That which took place in Surrey, took place 
in every other county, only to a greater extent in pro- 
portion to the greater wealth and resources of the spot. 
Defacing followed closely upon the heels of confisca- 
tion and plunder. If buildings could have been mur- 
dered, the tyrant and his plunderers would have made 
short work of it. As it was, they did all they could: 
they knocked down, they blowed ap, they annihilated 
as far as they could. Nothing, indeed, short of diabol- 
ical malice was to be expected from such men; but, 
there were two Abbeys in England, which one might 
have hoped, that even these monsters would have spar- 
ed; that which contained the tomb of St. Austin, and 
that which had been founded by and contained the re- 
mains of Alfred. We have seen how they rifled the 
tomb of St. Austin at Canterbury. They tore down 
the Church and the Abbey, and with the materials 
built a menagerie for wild beasts, and a palace for the 
tyrant himself. The tomb of Alfred was in an Ab- 
bey, at Winchester, founded by that king himself. 
The Abbey and its estates were given by the tyrant to 
Wriothesley, who was afterwards made Earl of 
Southampton, and who had got a pretty good share of 
the confiscations in Hampshire. One almost sickens at 
the thought of a man capable of a deed like the de- 
struction of this Abbey. Where is there one amongst 
us, who has read any thing at all, who has not read of the 
fame of Alfred? What book can we open, even for 
our boyish days, that does not sound his praise? Poets, 
moralists, divines, historians, philosophers, lawyers, 
legislators, not only of, our own country, but of all Eu- 
rope, have cited him, and still cite him, as a model of 
virtue, piety, wisdom, valour, and patriotism; as pos- 
sessing every excellence, without a single fault. He in 
spite of difficulties such as no other human being on re- 
cord ever encountered, cleared his harassed and half- 
barbarized country of horde after horde of cruel inva- 
ders, who, at one time, had wholly subdued it, and 



120 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

compelled him, in order to escape destruction, to resort 
to the habit and the life of a herdsman. From this 
state of depression he, during* a not long life, raised 
himself and his people to the highest point of happiness 
and of fame. He fought, with his armies and fleets, 
more than fifty battles against the enemies of England. 
He taught his people, by his example as well as by his 
precepts, to be sober, industrious, brave and just. He 
promoted learning in all the sciences; he planted the 
University of Oxford; to him, and not to a late Scotch 
lawyer, belongs " Trial by Jury;" Blackstone calls 
him the founder of the Common Law; the counties , the 
hundreds, the tithings, the courts of justice, were the 
work of Alfred; he, in fact, was the founder of those 
rights, liberties, and laws, which made England to be 
what England has been, which gave her a character 
above that of other nations, which made her rich and 
great and happy beyond all her neighbours, and which 
still give her whatever she possesses of that pre-emi- 
nence. If there be a name under heaven, to which 
Englishmen ought to bow with reverence approaching 
towards adoration, it is the name of Alfred. And, we 
are not unjust and ungrateful in this respect, at any 
rate; for, whether Catholics or Protestants, where is 
there an Englishman- to be found who would not glad- 
ly make a pilgrimage of a thousand miles to take off 
his hat at the tomb of this maker of the English name? 
Alas! that tomb is no where to be found. The barba- 
rians spared not even that. It was in the abbey before- 
mentioned, called Hyde Abbey, which had been found- 
ed by Alfred himself, and intended as the place of his 
burial. Besides the remains of Alfred, this abbey 
contained those of St. Grimbald, the Benedictine 
monk, whom Alfred brought into England to begin the 
teaching at Oxford. But, what cared the plunderers 
for remains of public benefactors? The abbey was 
knocked down, or blowed up* the tombs were demol- 
ished; the very lead of the coffins was sold; and, 
whioh fills us with more indignation than all the rest, 
the estates were so disposed of, as to make the loan- 
rs, the Barings, at this day, the successors of Al- 
fred tlie Great ! 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 121 

186. Wriothesley got the manors of Michelde- 
ter and Stratton, which, by marriage, came into the 
hands of the family of Russell, and from that family, 
about thirty years ago, they were bought by the Ba- 
rings, and are now in possession of Sir Thomas Ba- 
ring. It is curious to Observe how this Protestant 
" Reformation" has worked. If it had not been, there 
would have he^n no paupers at Micheldever and Strat- 
ton; but, then the Russels would not have had the es- 
tates, and they could not have sold them to the Barings; 
aye, but then there would have been, too, no national 
debt, as well as no paupers, and there would have been 
no loan-makers to buy the estates of the Russells. Be- 
sides this, there would have been no Bridewell erected 
upon the precise spot where the abbey-church stood; 
no tread-mill, perhaps, over the very place, where the 
ashes of Alfred lay; and, what is more, there would 
have been no need of bridewell or tread-mill. It is re- 
lated of Alfred, that he made people so honest, that 
he could hang bracelets up by the way-side, without 
danger of their being touched. Alas! that the descend- 
ants of that same people should need a tread-mill! 
Aye, but, in the days of Alfred there were no pau- 
pers ; no miserable creatures compelled to labour from 
month's end to month's end, without seeing meat ; no 
thousands upon thousands made thieves by that hunger, 
which acknowledges no law, human or divine. 

1 87. Thus, then, was the country devastated, sacked, 
and defaced; and I should now proceed to give an ac- 
count of the commencement of that poverty and degrada- 
tion, which were, as I have pledged myself to show, 
the consequences of this devastation; and which I shall 
show, not by bare assertion, nor from what are called 
" histories of England ;" but, from acts of parliament, 
and from other sources, which every one can refer to, 
and the correctness of which is beyond all dispute. 
Bu f , before we come to this important matter, we must 
see the end of the ruffian " Vice-gerent^ and also the 
end of the tyrant himself, who was, during the events 
that we have been speaking of, going on marrying, and 
divorcing, or killing, his wives; but, whose career was. 
after all, not verv long. 

II 



122 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

188. After the death of Jane Seymour, who was 
the mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of 
all the tyrant's wives who had the good luck to die a 
queen, and to die in her bed; after her death, which 
took place in 1537, he was nearly two year&hunting up 
another wife. None, certainly, but some very gross 
and unfeeling woman could be expected to have, volun- 
tarily, any thing to do with a man, whose hands were 
continually steeped in blood. In 1539 he found, how- 
ever, a mate in Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves. 
When she arrived in England, he expressed his dislike 
of her person; but he found it prudent to marry her. 
In 1540, about six or seven months after the marriage, 
he was divorced from her, not daring, in this case, to 
set his myrmidons to work to bring her to the block. 
There was no lawful pretence for the divorce. The 
husband did not like his wife : that was all: and this was 
alleged too as the ground of the divorce. Cranmer, 
who had divorced him from two wives before, put his 
irons into the fire again for this occasion; and produced, 
in a little time, as neat a piece of work as ever had 
come from the shop of the famous " Reformation." 
Thus the king and queen were single 'people again; but 
the former had another young and handsome wife in his 
eye. This lady's name was Catharine Howard, a 
niece of the Duke of Norfolk. This Duke, as well 
as most of the old nobility, hated Cromwell; and 
now was an opportunity of inflicting vengeance on him. 
Cromwell had been the chief cause of the king's mar- 
riage with Anne of Cleves; but, the fact is, his plun- 
dering talent was no longer wanted, and it was conveni- 
ent to the tyrant to get rid of him. 

189. Cromwell had obtained enormous wealth, 
from his several offices, as well from the plunder of the 
church and the poor. He had got about thirty of the 
estates belongidg to the monasteries; his house, or rath- 
er palace, was gorged with, the fruits of the sacking; 
he had been made Earl of Essex; he had precedence 
of every one but the king ; and he, in fact, represented 
the king in the parliament, where he introduced and 
defended all his confiscating and murdering laws. He 
Jiad been barbarous beyond all description towards the 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 123 

unfortunate and unoffending monks and nuns ; with- 
out such an instrument, the plunder never could have 
been effected: but, he was no longer wanted; the ruf- 
fian had already lived too long; the very walls of the 
devastated convents seemed to call for public ven- 
geance on his head. On the morning of the 10th of 
June, 1540, he was all-powerful: in the evening of the 
same day he was in prison as a traitor. He lay in prison 
only a few days before he had to experience the benefit 
of his own way of administering justice. He had, as we 
have seen in the last Number, invented a way of bring- 
ing people to the block, or the gallows, without giving 
them any form of trial; without giving them even a hear- 
ing ; but merely by passing a law to put them to death. 
This was what this abomlnsble wretch had brought 
about in the case of the Countess op Salisbury; and 
tliis was what was now to fall on his own head. 
He lived only about forty-eight days after his arrest; 
not half long enough to enable him to enumerate, barely 
to enumerate, the robberies and murders committed un- 
der his orders. His time seems, however, to have been 
spent, not in praying God to forgive him for these rob- 
beries and murders, but in praying to the tyrant to spare 
his life. Perhaps of all the mean and dastardly wretches 
that ever died, this was the most mean and dastardly 
He, who had been the most insolent and cruel of rumV 
ans, when he had power, was now the most disgusting- 
ly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed no 
crime against the king; though charged with heresy and 
treason, he was no more a heretic than the king was; 
and, as to the charge of treason, there was not a sha- 
dow of foundation for it. But, he was jusi as guilty of 
treason as the Abbots of Reading, Colchester, and Glas- 
tonbury, all of whom, and many more, he had been the 
chief instrument in putting to death. He put them to death 
in order to get possession of their property; and, I dare say 
to get at his property, to get the plunder back from him, 
was one of the motives for bringing him to the block. 
This very ruffian had superintended the digging up of 
the ashes of Thomas a Becket, and scattering them in 
the air; and now, the people who had witnessed that, 
had to witness the letting of the blood out of his dirty 



124 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

body, to run upon the pavement, to be licked up by 
hogs or dogs. The cowardly creature seems to have 
had, from the moment of his arrest, no thought about 
any thing but saving his life. He wrote repeatedly to 
the king, in the hope of getting pardoned: but, all to no 
purpose: he had done what was wanted of him; the 
work of plunder was nearly over; he had, too, got a large 
share of the plunder, which it was not convenient to leave 
in his hands; and therefore, upon true " Reformation" 
principles, it was time to take away his life. He, in his 
letters to the king, most vehemently protested his inno- 
cence. Aye; no doubt of that: but he was not more in- 
nocent than were the butchered Abbots and Monks: he 
was not more innocent than any one out of those thou- 
sands upon thousands, whom he had quartered, hanged, 
burned, or plundered; and, amongst all those thousands, 
upon thousands, there never was seen one, female or male, 
so complete a dastard as himself. In these letters to the ty- 
rant, he fawned on him in the most disgusting manner; 
compared his smiles and frowns to those of God; besought 
him to suffer him " to kiss his balmy hand once more, 
that the fragrance thereof might make him fit for 
heaven!" The base creature deserved his death, if it 
had only been for writing these letters. Fox, the " Mar- 
tyT"-man, calls this Cromwell, the u valiant soldier of 
the Reformation." Yes, there have been few soldiers 
to understand sacking better: he was full of valour on 
foraging parties; and when he had to rifle monks and 
nuns and to rob altars: a brave fellow when he had to 
stretch monks and nuns on the rack, to make them con- 
fess treasonable words or thoughts: but when death be- 
gan to stare him in the face, he was, assuredly, the most 
cowardly caitiff that ever died. It is hardly necessary 
to say, that this man is a great favourite of Hume, who 
deeply laments Cromwell's fate, though he has not a 
word of compassion to bestow upon all the thousands 
that had been murdered or ruined by him. He, as well 
as other historians, quote, from the conclusion of one 
of Cromwell's letters to the king, these abject expres- 
sions: " I, a most woful prisoner, am ready to submit to 
" death, when it shall please God and your Majesty; 
" and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 125 

u for mercy and pardon of mine offences. Written at 
" the Tower with the heavy heart and trembling hand 
"of your Highness's most miserable prisoner and poor 

"slave, Thomas Cromwell. Most gracious prince, 

" I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy !" That is the lan- 
guage of Fox's " valiant soldier. Fox meant valiant, 
not in the field, or on the scaffold, but in the convent^ 
pulling the rings from women's fingers, and tearing the 
gold clasps from books: that was the Protestant valour 
of the " Reformation." Hume says, that Cromwell 
" deserved a better fate?' Never was fate more just or 
more appropriate. He had been the willing, the offi- 
cious, the zealous, the eager agent in the execution of 
ail the tyrannical, sacrilegious and bloody deeds of his 
master; and had, amongst other things, been the very 
man who first suggested the condemning of people to 
death without trial. What could be more just than that 
he should die in the same way f Not a tear was shed at 
his death, which produced on the spectators an effect 
such as is produced when the foulest of murderers ex- 
piate their crimes on the gallows. 

190. During the seven years that the tyrant himself, 
survived this his cruel and dastardly Vicegerent, he was 
beset with disappointments, vexations and torments of all 
sorts. He discovered, at the end of a kw months, 
that his new queen had been, and still was, much such 
another as Anne Boleyn. He, with very little cere- 
mony, sent her to the block, together with a whole 
posse of her relations, lovers, and cronies. He raged 
and foamed like a itvild beast, passed laws most bloody 
to protect himself against lewdness and infidelity in his 
future wives, &hd got, for his pains, the ridicule of the 
nation and of all Europe. He for the last time, took 
another wife; but, this time, none would face his laws, 
but a widoiv; and she very narrowly escaped the fate 
of the rest. He, for some years before he died, be- 
came, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an unwieldy 
and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by means of 
mechanical inventions. • But, still he retained aM the fe- 
rocity and bloody-mindedness of his former days. The 
principal business of his life was the ordering of accu- 
sations, executions and confiscations. When on his 
11* 



126 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

death-bed, every one was afraid to intimate his danger 
to him, least death to the intimator should be the conse- 
quence ; and he died before he was well aware of his 
condition, leaving more than one death-warrant unsign- 
ed for want of time ! 

191. Thus expired, in the year 1547, in the fifty- 
sixth year of his age and in the thirty-eighth of his 
reign, the most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest and most 
sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whe- 
ther Christian or Heathen. That England which he 
found in peace, unity, plenty and happiness, he left torn 
by factions and schisms, her people wandering about in 
beggary and misery. He laid the foundations of 
immorality, dishonesty and pauperism, all which pro- 
duced an abundant harvest in the reigns of his unhap- 
py, barren, mischievous and miserable children, with 
whom, at the end of a few years, his house and his 
name were extinguished forever. How he disposed of 
the plunder of the church and the poor; how his succes- 
sors completed that work of confiscation which he had 
carried on so long; how the nation sunk in point of cha- 
racter and of wealth; how pauperism first arose in Eng- 
land; and how were sown the seeds of that system of 
which we now behold the effects in the impoverishment and 
degradation of the main body of the people of England 
and Ireland; all these will be shown in the next number: 
and shown, I trust, in a manner which will leave, in the 
mind of every man of sense, no doubt, that, of all the 
scourges that ever afflicted this conntry, none is to be 
put in comparison with the Protestant " Reformation." 



FROTBSTANT REFORMATION. 12? 

LETTER VIL 

Edward V. Crowned. 

Perjury of the Executors of Henry VIIL 

New Church " By Law Established," 

Robbery of the Churches. 

Insurrections of the People. 

Treasons of Cranmer and his Associates, 

Death of the King. 



Kensington, 31 st May, 1825. 
My Friends, 

192. Having, in the preceding Numbers, shown, 
that the thing, impudently called the " Reformation," 
was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hy- 
pocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, 
devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish 
blood, I intended to show, in the present Number, how 
the main body of the people were, by these doings, im- 
poverished and degraded up to this time ; that is to say, 
I intended to trace the impoverishment and degradation 
down to the end of the reign of the bloody tyrant, 
Henry VIIL But, upon reviewing my matter, I think 
it best first to go through the whole of my account of 
the plunderings, persecuting and murderings of the 
u Reformation" people; and when we have seen all 
the robberies and barbarities that they committed under 
the hypocritical pretence of religious zeal; or, rather, 
when we have seen such of those robberies and bar- 
barities as we can find room for; then I shall conclude 
with showing how enormously the nation lost by the 
change ; and, how that change made, the main part of 
the people poor and wretched and degraded. By pur- 
suing this plan, I shall, in one concluding Number, give, 
or, at least, endeavour to give, a clear and satisfactory his- 
tory of this impoverishment. I shall take the present Pro- 
testant labourer, with his cold potatoes and water, and 
show him how his Catholic forefathers lived; and if 
those cold potatoes and water, if this poorer than pig- 
diet, have not quite taken away all the natural qualities 



128 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

of English blood, I shall make him execrate the plun- 
derers and hypocrites by whom was produced that 
change, which has finally led to his present misery, and 
to nine-tenths of that mass of corruption and crime, 
public and private, which now threatens to uproot so- 
ciety itself. 

193. In pursuance of this plan, and in conformity 
with my promise to conclude my little work in Ten 
Numbers, I shall distribute my matter thus: in Num- 
ber VII., (the present,) the deeds and events of the 
reign of Edward VI. In Number VIII., those of the 
reign of Queen Mary. In Number IX., those of the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth; and, in Number X., the facts 
and arguments to establish my main point; namely, that 
the thing, impudently called the " Reformation," impo- 
verished and degraded the main body of the people. 
In the course of the first three of these Numbers, I 
shall not touch, except incidentally, upon the impover- 
ishing and degrading effects of the change; but, shall 
reserve these for the last Number, when having wit- 
nessed the horrid means, we will take an undivided 
view of the consequences, tracing those consequences 
down to the present day. 

1 94. In paragraph 1 90 we had the satisfaction to see 
the savage tyrant expire at a premature old age, with 
body swelled and bursting from luxury, and with a 
mind torn by contending passions. One of his last acts 
was a will, by which he made his infant son his imme- 
diate successor, with remainder, in case he died with- 
out issue, to his daughter Mary first, and then, in de- 
fault of issue again, to his daughter Elizabeth; 
though, observe, both the daughters still stood bastar- 
dized by Act of Parliament, and though the latter was 
born of Anne Boleyn while the King's first wife, the 
mother of Mary, was alive. 

1 95. To carry this will into execution and to govern 
the kingdom until Edward, who was then ten years of 
age, should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen 
exe:uiors appointed, amongst whom was Seymour, 
Earl of Hertford, and the "honest Cranmer." 
These sixteen worthies began by taking, in the most 
solemn manner, an oath to stand to and maintain the last 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 129 

will of their master. Their second act was to break that 
mth by making Hertford, who was a brother of 
Jane Seymour, the King's mother, "protector " though 
the will gave equal powers to all the executors. Their 
next step was to give new peerages to some of them- 
selves. The fourth, to award to the new peers grants 
of the public money. The fifth was to lay aside, at 
the Coronation, the ancient English custom of asking 
the people if they were willing to have and obey the Ki7ig. 
The sixth was " to attend at a solemn high mass." 
And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the 
total subversion of all that remained of the Catholic 
Religion in England and for the effecting of all that 
Old Harry had left uneffected in the way of plunder. 

196. The monasteries were gone; the cream had 
been taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk 
of church-altars, chanteries, and guilds. Old Harry 
would, doubtless, if he had lived much longer, have 
plundered these; but, he had not done it, and he could 
not do it without openly becoming Protestant, which, 
for the reasons stated in paragraph 101, he would not 
do. But Hertford and his fifteen brother worthies 
had in their way no such obstacles as the ruffian King 
had had. The church-altars, the chanteries and the 
guilds contained something valuable; and they longed 
to be at it. The power of the Pope was gotten rid of, 
the country had been sacked; the poor had been de- 
spoiled; but still there were some pickings left. The 
piety of ages had made every church, however small, 
contain some, gold and silver appertaining to the altar, 
The altars, in the parish- churches, and, generally, in the 
Cathedrals, had been left, as yet, untouched ; for, 
though the wife-killer had abjured the Por-E, whose 
power he had taken to himself, he still professed to be 
of the Catholic faith, and he maintained the mass and 
the sacraments and creeds with fire and faggot. There- 
fore he had left the church-altars unplundered. But, 
they contained gold, silver, and other valuables, and the 
worthies saw these with longing eyes and itching 
fingers. 

1 97. To seize them, however, there required a pre- 
text; and what pretext could there be, short of declar- 



130 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ing, at once, that the Catholic religion was false and 
wicked, and, of course, that there ought to be no altars , 
and, of course, no gold and silver things appertaining to 
them ! The sixteen worthies, with Hertford at their 
head, and with Cranmer amongst them, had had the king 
crowned as a Catholic ; he, as well as they, had taken 
the oaths as Catholics; they had sworn to uphold that 
religion; they had taken him to a high mass, after 
his coronation; but, the altars had good things about 
them; there was plunder remaining; and to get at this 
remaining plunder, the Catholic religion must be whol- 
ly put down. There were, doubtless, some fanatics; 
some who imagined that the religion of nine hundred 
years standing ought not to be changed; some who had 
not plunder, and plunder only in view; but, it is impos- 
sible for any man of common s^nse, of unperverted 
mind, to look at the history of this transaction, at this 
open avowal of Protestanism, at this change from the 
religion of England to that of a part of Germany, 
without being convinced that the principal authors of 
it had plunder and plunder only in view. 

1 98. The old tyrant died in 1547; and by the end of 
1549, Cranmer who had tied so many Protestants to 
the stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly 
completed a system of Protestant worship. He first 
prepared a book of homilies and a catechism, in order 
to pave the way. Next came a law to allow the clergy 
to have wives; and then, when all things had been 
prepared, came the Book of Common Prayer and 
Administration of the Sacraments. Gardiner, who 
was Bishop of Winchester, reproached Cranmer with 
his duplicity; reminded him of the zeal with which he 
had upheld the Catholic worship under the late king, 
and would have made him hang himself, or cut his 
throat, if he had had the slightest remains of shame in 
him. 

1 99. This new system did not, however, go far enough 
for the fanatics; and there instantly appeared arrayed 
against it whole tribes of new lights on the Continent. 
So that Cranmer, cunning as he was, soon found that 
he had undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put 
forth upon this occasion, were disgustingly ridiculouSj 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 151 

coming, as they did, in the name of a king only ten years 
of age, and expressed in words so solemnly pompous 
and so full of arrogance. However, the chief object 
was the plunder ; and to get at this, nothing was spared. 
There were other things to attract the grasp; but, it 
will be unnecessary to dwell very particularly on any 
thing but the altars and the churches. This was the 
real '"reformation reign;" for, it was a reign of robbery 
and hypocrisy without any thing to be compared with 
them; anything in any country or in any age. Reli- 
gion, conscience, was always the pretext; but, in one 
May or another, robbery, plunder, was always the end. 
The people, once so united and so happy, became divi- 
ded into innumerable sects, no man knowing hardly 
what to believe; and, indeed, no one knowing what it 
was lawful for him to say; for it soon became impossi- 
ble for the common people to know what was heresy, 
and what was not heresy. 

200. That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, du- 
ring the reign of Henry, had condemned people to the 
flames for not believing in transubstantiation, was now 
ready to condemn them for believing in it. We have 
seen that Luther was the beginner of the work of "re- 
formation;" but, he was soon followed by further re- 
formers on the Continent. These had made many at- 
tempts to propagate their doctrines in England; but, 
old Henry had kept them down. Now, however, when 
the churches were to be robbed of what remained in 
them, and when, to have a pretext for that robbery, it 
was necessary to make a complete change in the form of 
worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which 
became one great scene of religious disputation. Some 
were for the Common Prayer Book; others proposed 
alterations in it; others were for abolishing it altogeth- 
er; and, there now began that division, that multiplicity 
of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present 
day. Cranmer employed a part of the resources of 
the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, 
or, rather, impious, adventurers, who sided with him, 
and who chose the best market for their doctrines. 
England was overrun by these foreign traders in reli- 
gion; and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence. 



332 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only 
to foreigners, but to foreigners of the most base and in- 
famous character and description. Cranmer could 
not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in 
executing the work that he had in hand. The Protect- 
or, Hertford, whom we must now call Somerset, (the 
child-rking having made him Duke of Somerset,) was 
the greatest of all "reformers" that had yet appeared in 
the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest and 
most audacious of all the plunderers that this famous 
reformation has produced, save and except Old Harry 
himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship 
was necessaay to his projects of plunder; and, there- 
fore, he was a great encourager of these greedy and 
villainous foreigners. Perhaps the world has never, in 
any age, seen a nest of such atrocious miscreants as 
Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Beza, and the rest of 
the distinguished reformers of the Catholic religion. 
Every one of them was notorious for the most scanda- 
lous vices, even according to the full confession of his 
own followers. They agreed in nothing but in the doc- 
trine, that good works were useless; and their lives prov- 
ed the sincerity of their teaching; for there was not a 
man of them whose acts did not merit a halter. 

201. The consequences to the morals of the people 
were such as were naturally to be expected. All his- 
torians agree, that vice of all sorts, and crimes of every 
kind were never so great and so numerous before. This 
was confessed by the teachers themselves; and yet the 
Protestants have extolled this reign as the reign of con- 
science and religion! It was so manifest that the change 
was a bad one, that men could not have proceeded in it 
from error. Its mischiefs were all manifest before the 
death of the old tyrant: that death afforded an opportu- 
nity for returning into the right path; but there were plun- 
der remaining, and the plunderers went on. The " reform- 
ation" was not the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of er- 
ror, of ambition; but of a love of plunder. This was its 
great animating principle: in this it began, and in this it 
proceeded till there was nothing left for it to work on. 

202. The old tyrant had, in certain cases, enabled his 
minions to. rob the bishopricks ; but, now, there was a 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 133 

grand sweep at them. The Protector took the lead, 
and his example was followed by others. They took 
so much from one, so much from another, and some they 
wholly suppressed, as that of Westminster, and took 
their estates to themselves. There were many chante- 
ries, (private property to all intents and purposes \)frce 
chapeh, also private property; alms-houses; hospitals; 
guilds, or fraternities, the property of which was as 
much private property as the funds of any Friendly So- 
ciety now are. All these became lawful plunder. And 
yet there are men, who pretend, that what is now pos- 
sessed by the Established Church is of so sacred a na- 
ture as not to be touched by Act of Parliament ! This was 
the reign, in which this our present Established Church 
was founded; for, though the frabric was overset by 
Mary, it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was 
that it was made. It was made, and the new worship 
along with it, by Acts of Parliament, and it now seems 
to be high time, that, by similar Acts, it should be un- 
made. It had its very birth in division, disunion, dis- 
cord; and its life has been worthy of its birth. The 
property it possesses was taken, nominally, from the 
Catholic Church ; but in reality, from that Church and 
also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent and the 
stranger. The pretext for making it was, that it would 
cause an union of sentiment amongst the people; that it 
would compose all dissensions. The truth, the obvious 
truth, that there could be but one true religion, was ac- 
knowledged and loudly proclaimed; and, it was not to 
be denied, that there were already twenty, the teachers 
of. every one of which declared that all the others were 
false, and, of course, that they were, at the very least, 
no better than no religion at all. Indeed, this is the lan- 
guage of common sense; though it is now so fashionable 
to disclaim the doctrine of exclusive salvation. I ask the 
Unitarian parson, or prater for instance, why he takes 
upon him that office; why he does not go and follow 
some trade, or why he does not work in the fields. His 
answer is, that he is more usefully employed in teach- 
ing. If I ask, of what use his teaching is, he tells me, 
he must tell me, that his teaching is necessary to the saU 
nation of souls. Well, say I, but, why not leave that 
12 



134 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

business to the Established Church, to which the peo- 
ple all pay tithes ? Oh, no ! says he; I cannot do that, be- 
cause the Church does not teach the true religion. Well, 
say I; but, true or false, if it serve for salvation, what 
signifies it? Here I have him penned up in a corner. — ■ 
He is compelled to confess, that he is a fellow wanting* 
to lead an easy life by pandering to the passions or 
whims of conceited persons; or, to insist, that his sort 
of belief and teaching are absolutely necessary to salva- 
tion: as he will not confess the former, he is obliged to 
insist on the latter; and here, after all his railing against 
the iyitolerance of the Catholics, he maintains the doc- 
trine of exclusive salvation. 

203. Two true religions, two true creeds, differing 
from each other, contradicting each other, present us 
with an impossibility: what, then, are we to think of 
twenty or forty creeds, each differing from all the rest? 
If deism, or atheism, be something not only wicked 
in itself, but so mischievous in its effects as to call, in 
case of the public profession of it, for imprisonment for 
years and years; if this be the case, what are we to 
think of laws, the same laws too which inflict that cruel 
punishment, tolerating and encouraging a multiplicity of 
creeds, all but one of which must be false? A code of 
laws acknowledging and tolerating but one religion is 
consistent in punishing the deist and the atheist; but if it 
acknowledge or tolerate more than one, it acknowledges 
or tolerates one false one; and let divines say, whether 
a false religion is not as bad as deism or atheism. Be- 
sides, is it just to punish the deist or the atheist for not be- 
lieving in the Christian religion at all, when he sees the 
law tolerate so many religions, all but one of which 
must be false? What is the natural effect of men see- 
ing constantly before their eyes a score or two of differ- 
ent sects, all calling themselves Christians, all tolerated 
by the law, and each openly declaring that all the rest 
are false? The natural, the necessary effect is, that ma- 
ny men well believe that none of them have truth on their 
side ; and, of course, that the thing is false altogether, 
and invented solely for the benefit of those who teach it, 
and who dispute about it. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 135 

204. The law should acknowledge and tolerate but 
©ne religion; or it should know nothing at all about tlie 
matter. The Catholic code was consistent. It said, 
that there was but one true religion; and it punished as 
offenders those who dared openly to profess any opinion 
contrary to that religion. Whether that were the true 
religion or not, we have not now to inquire; but, while 
its long continuance, and in so many nations too, was a 
strong presumptive proof of its good moral effects up- 
on the people, 1 the disagreement amongst the Protestants 
was, and is, a presumptive proof, not less strong, of its 
truth. If, as 1 observed upon a former occasion, there 
be forty persons, who, and whose fathers, for countless 
generations, have, up to this day, entertained a certain 
belief; and, if thirty-nine of these say, at last, that this 
belief is erroneous, we may naturally enough suppose, 
or, at least, we may think it possible, that the truth, so 
long hidden, is, though late, come to light. But, if the 
thirty-nine begin, and instantly begin, to entertain, in- 
stead of the one old belief, thirty-nine new beliefs, each 
differing from all the other thirty-eight, must we not, in 
common justice, decide that the old belief must have 
been the true one? What; shall we hear these thirty- 
nine protestors against the ancient faith each protesting 
against all the other thirty-eight, and still believe that 
their joint protest was just ! Thirty-eight of them must 
now he in error : this must be: and are we still to believe 
in the correctness of their former decision, and that, 
too, relating to the same identical matter? If, in a trial, 
relating to the dimensions of a piece of land, which had 
been proved to have always been, time without mind, taken 
for twenty acres, there were one surveyor to swear that 
it contained twenty acres, and each of thirty-nine other 
surveyors to swear to each of the other number of acres 
between one a.n& forty, what judge and jury would hesi- 
tate a moment in crediting him who swore to the twen- 
ty, and in wholly rejecting the testimony of all the rest? 

205. Thus the argument would stand, on the suppo- 
sition that thirty-nine parts out of forty of all Christen- 
dom had protested; but there were not, and there are 
liot, even unto this day, two parts out of fifty. So that 
iiere we have $hirty~nim persons, breaking off from 



136 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

about two thousand, protesting- against the faith which 
the whole, and their fathers, have held, we have each 
of these thirty-nine instantly protesting that all the 
other thirty-eight have protested upon false grounds; 
and yet we are to believe, that their joint protest against 
the faith of the two thousand, who were backed by all 
antiquity, was wise and just! Is this the way in which 
we decide in other cases? Did honest men, and men not 
-blinded by passion, or by some base motive, ever de- 
cide thus before? Besides, if the Catholic faith is so 
false as it is, by some, pretended to be, how comes it 
not to have been extirpated before now ? When indeed, 
the Pope had very great power; when even kings were 
compelled to bend to him, it might be said, and pretty 
fairly said, that no one dared use the weapons of reason 
against the Catholic faith. But, we have seen the Pope 
a prisoner in a foreign land; we have seen him without 
scarcely food and raiment; and we have seen the press 
of more than half the world at liberty to treat him and 
his faith as it pleased to treat them. But, have we not 
seen the Protestant sects at work for three hundred years 
to destroy the Catholic faith? Do we not see, at the 
end of those three hundred years, that that faith is still 
the reigning faith of Christendom? Nay, do we not see 
that it is gaining ground at this very moment, even in 
this kingdom itself, where a protestant hierarchy receives 
eight millions sterling a year, and where Catholics are 
still rigidly excluded from all honour and power, and, 
in some cases, from all political and civil rights, under 
a constitution founded by their Catholic ancestors? Can 
it be, then, that this faith is false? Can it be that this 
worship is idolatrous? Can it be that it was necessary 
to abolish them in England, as far as law could do it? 
Can it be that it was for our good, our honour, to sack 
our country, to violate all the rights of property, to de- 
luge the country with blood, in order to change our re- 
ligion? 

206. But, in returning, now, to the works of the plun- 
derers, we ought to remark, that, in discussions of this 
sort, it is a common, but a very great error, to keep 
our eyes so exclusively fixed on mere matters of reli- 
gion. The Catholic Church included in it a great deal 
more than the business of teaching religion and of prac*- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 137 

tising worship and administering sacraments. It had a 
great deal to do with the temporal concerns of the peo- 
ple. It provided, and amply provided, for all the wants 
of the poor and distressed. It received back, in many 
instances, what the miser and extortioner had taken un- 
fairly, and applied it to works of beneficence. It con- 
tained a great body of land proprietors, whose revenues 
were distributed, in various ways, amongst the people 
at large, upon terms always singularly advantageous to 
the latter. It was a great and powerful estate, indepen- 
dent both of the aristocracy and the crown, and natu- 
rally siding with the people. But, above all things, it 
was a provider for the poor and a keeper of hospitality. 
By its charity, and by its benevolence towards its te- 
nants and dependants, it mitigated the rigour of pro- 
prietorship, and held society together by the ties of re- 
ligion rather tfran by the trammels and terrors of the 
law. It was the great cause of that description of te- 
nants called life-holders, who formed a most important 
link in the chain of society, coming after the proprie- 
tors in fee, and before the tenant at will, participating, 
in some degree, of the proprietorship of the estate, and 
yet, not wholly without dependance on the proprietor. 
This race of persons, formerly so numerous in Engla jd, 
has, by degrees, become almost wholly extinct, their 
place having been supplied by a comparatively few rack- 
renters, and by swarms of miserable paupers. The Ca- 
tholic Church held the lending of money for interest, 
or gain, to be directly in the face of the Gospel. It 
considered all such gain as usurious, and, of course, 
criminal. It taught the making of loans without inte- 
rest; and thus it prevented the greedy-minded from 
amassing wealth in that way in which wealth is most 
easily amassed. Usury amongst Christians was wholly 
unknown, until the wife-killing tyrant had laid his hands 
on thfe property of the Church and the poor. The prin- 
ciples of the Catholic Church all partook of generosity; 
it was their great characteristic, as selfishness is the 
character of that Ciiurch which was established in its 
stead. 

207. The plunder which remained after the seizure 
of the monasteries was comparatively small; but, still, 
12* 



1 38 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

the very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings 
of the harvest of plunder, were something; and these 
were not suffered to remain. Thephmder of the churches, 
parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all 
sorts of antics played in those churches. Calvin had 
got an influence opposed to that of Cranmer; so that 
there was almost open war amongst these protestants, 
which party should have the teaching of the people. 
After due preparation in this way, the robbery was set 
about in due form. Every church altar had, as I have- 
before observed; more or less of gold and silver. A 
part consisted of images, a part of censers, candle- 
sticks, and other things used in the celebration of the 
mass. The mass was, therefore, abolished, and there 
was no longer to be an altar, but a table in its stead. 
The fanatical part of the reformers amused themselves 
with quarrelling about the part of the church where 
the table wa*to stand; about the shape of it, and whe- 
ther the head of it was to be placed to the North, the 
East, the West, or the South; and whether the people 
were to stand, kneel, or sit at it! The plunderers, 
however, thought about other things; they thought 
about the value of the images, censers, and the like. 

208. To reconcile the people to these innovations, the 
plunderers had a Bible contrived for the purpose, 
which Bible was a perversion of the original text, where- 
ver it was found to be necessary. Of all the acts of 
this hypocritical and plundering reign, this was, per- 
haps, the basest. In it we see the true character of the 
heroes of the " Protestant Reformation;" and the poor 
and miserable labourers of England, who now live up- 
on potatoes and water, feel the consequences of the 
deeds of the infamous times of which I am speaking. 
Every preparation being made, the robbery began, and 
a general plunder of churches took place by royal 
and parliamentary authority ! The robbers took away 
every thing valuable, even down to the vestments of the 
priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of be- 
fore, and, for the honour of human nature, let us hope 
that it will never be heard of again. It seems that Eng- 
land was really become a den of thieves, and of thieves* 
too, of the lowest and most despicable character, 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 



i3a 



209. The Protector, Somerset, did not forget him* 
aelf. Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics, 
he needed a palace in London. For the purpose of 
building this palace, which was erected in the Strand, 
London, and which was called " Somerset-House," as 
the place is called to this day, he took from three bish- 
ops their town houses; he pulled these down, together 
with a parish church, in order to get a suitable spot for 
the erection. The materials of these demolished build- 
ings being insufficient for his purpose, he pulled down 
a part of the buildings appertaining to the then cathedral 
of Saint Paul; the church of Saint John, near Smith- 
field; Barking Chapel, near the Tower; the college 
church of St. Martin-le-Grand; St. E wen's church, 
Newgate; and the parish church of Saint Nicholas. 
He, besides these, ordered the pulling down of the par- 
ish church of Saint Margaret, Westminster; but, says 
Dr. Heylyn, " the workmen had no sooner advanced 
"their scaffolds, wiien the parishioners gathered to- 
" gether in great multitudes, with bows and arrows and 
" staves and clubs; which so terrified the workmen that 
" they ran away in great amazement, and never could 
"be brought again upon that employment." Thus 
arose Somerset-House, the present grand seat of the 
power of fiscal grasping. It was first erected literally 
with the ruins of churches, and it now serves, under its 
old name, as the place from which issue the mandates 
to us to give up the fruit of our earnings to pay the in- 
terest of a Debt, which is one of the evident and great 
consequences of the " Protestant Reformation," with- 
out which that Debt never could have existed. 

210. I am, in the last Number, to give an account of 
the impoverishment and degradation that these and for- 
mer Protestant proceedings produced amongst the peo- 
ple at large; but I must here notice, that the people 
heartily detested these Protestant tyrants and their acts. 
General discontent prevailed, and this, in some cases, 
broke out into open insurrection. It is curious enough 
to observe the excuses that Hume, in giving an account 
of these times, attempts to make for the plunderers and 
their " reformat ioa." It was his cons-ant aim to black- 
en the Catholic institutions, and particularly the charac- 



140 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ter and conduct of the Catholic clergy. Yet he eould not 
pass over these discontents and risings of the people; and, 
as there must have been a cause for these, he is under the 
necessity of ascribing them to the badness of the change, 
or to find out some other cause. He, therefore, goes to 
work in a very elaborate manner to make his readers 
believe that the people were in error as to the tendency 
of the change. He says, that " scarce any institution 
can be imagined less favourable, in the main, to the in- 
terests of mankind," than that of the Catholic; yet, 
says he, " as it was followed by many good effects, 
which had ceased with the suppression of the monaste- 
ries, that suppression was very much regretted by the 
people." He then proceeds to describe the many bene- 
fits 3 of the monastic institutions; says that the monks 
always residing on their estates, caused a diffusion of 
good constantly around them; that, " not having equal 
motives to avarice with other men, they were the best and 
most indulgent landlords;" that, when the church lands 
became private property, the rents were raised, the mo- 
ney spent a* a distance from the estates, and the tenants 
exposed to the rapacity of stewards; that whole es- 
tates were laid waste; that the tenants were expelled; 
and that even the cottagers were deprived of the com- 
mons on which they formerly fed their cattle; that a 
great decay of the people, as well as a diminutioii offor- 
mer plenty, was remarked in the kingdom; that, at the 
same time, the coin had been debased by Henry, and was 
now further debased; that the good coin was hoarded 
or exported ; that the common people were thus robbed 
of part of their wages; that " complaints were heard in 
every part of the kingdom." 

211. Well; was not this change a bad one, then? 
And what are the excuses which are offered for it by 
this calumniator of the Catholic institutions? Why, 
he says, that " their hospitality and charity gave encour- 
agement to idleness, and prevented the increase of pub- 
lic wealth-" and that, "as it was by an addition alone of 
" toil, that the people were able to live, this increase of 
61 industry was, at last, the effect of the PRESENT 
."SITUATION, an effect very beneficial to society." 
What does he mean by " the present situation?" The 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 1 41 

situation of the country, I suppose, at tJie time when he 
'wrote; and, though the "reformation" had not then 
produced pauperism and misery and Debt and taxes 
equal to the present, it was on the way to do it. But, 
what does he mean by " public riches?" The Catholic 
institutions " provided against the pressure of want 
amongst the people;" but, prevented the increase of 
" public riches ?" What, I again ask, is the meaning of the 
words, u public riches?" What is, or ought to be, the end of 
all government and of every institution? Why, the 
happiness of the people. But this man seems, like Adam 
Smith, and indeed, like almost every Scotch writer, to 
have a notion, that there may be great public good^ 
though producing individual misery. They seem always 
to regard the people as so many cattle, working for an 
indescribable something that they call " the public." The 
question with them, is, not whether the people, for 
whose good all government is instituted, be well off, or 
wretched; but, whether, the " public" gain, or lose, 
money, or money's worth. I am able to show, and I shall 
show, that England was a greater country before the 
" reformation" than since; that it was greater positively 
and relatively; that its real wealth was greater. But, 
what we have, at present, to observe, is, that, thus far, 
at any rate, the reformation had produced general mise- 
ry amongst the common people; and that, accordingly, 
complaints were heard from one end of the kingdom to 
the other. 

212. The Book of Common Prayer was to put an 
end to all dissensions; but, its promulgation and the 
consequent robbery of the churches were followed by 
open insurrection, in many of the counties, by battles, 
and executions by martial law. The whole kingdom 
was in commotion; but, particularly, to the great ho- 
nour of those counties, in Devonshire and Norfolk. In 
the former county the insurgents were superior in 
force to the hired troops, and had besieged Exeter. 
LORD Russell was sent against them, and, at last, re- 
inforced by GERMAN TROOPS, he defeated them, 
executed many by martial law, and most gallantly 
hanged a priest on the top of the tower of his church! 
This, I suppose, Mr. Brougham reckons amongst 
those services of the family of Russell, which, he tells 



142 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

us England can never repay! In Norfolk the insurrec- 
tion was still more formidable; but was finally sup- 
pressed by the aid of FOREIGN TROOPS, and was 
also followed by the most barbarous executions. The 
people of Devonshire complained of the alterations in 
religion ; that, as Dr. Heylyn, (a protestant divine,) ex- 
presses it, " that the free-born commonalty was op- 
" pressed by a small number of gentry, who glutted 
" themselves with pleasures, while the poor commons, 
" wasted by daily labour, like pack-horses, live in ex- 
treme slavery; and that holy rites, established by 
" their fathers, were abolished, and a new form of re- 
u ligion obtruded; and they demanded that the mass 
and a part of the monasteries should be restored, and 
that priests should not be allowed to -marry. Similar 
were the complaints and the demands every where 
else. But, Cranmer's Prayer Book and the Church 
" by law established," backed by foreign bayonets, fi- 
nally triumphed, at leslst for the present, and during 
the remainder of this hypocritical, base, corrupt, and 
tyrannical reign. 

213. Thus arose the Protestant Church, as by law 
established. Here we see its origin. Thus it was that 
it commenced its career. How different, alas! from 
the commencement of that Church of England, which 
arose under St. Austin at Canterbury, which had been 
cherished so carefully by Alfred the Great, and, un- 
der the wings of which the people of England had, 
for nine liundred years, seen their country the greatest 
in the world, and had themselves lived in ease and 
plenty and real freedom, superior to those of all other 
nations ! 

214. Somek-set, who had brought his own brother to 
the block in 1549, chiefly because he had opposed him- 
self to his usurpations, (though both were plunderers,) 
was not long after the commission of the above cruel- 
ties on the people, destined to come to that block him- 
self. Dudley Earl of Warwick, who was his rival 
in baseness and injustice, and his superior in talent, had 
out-intrigued him in the Council; and, at last, he 
brought him to that end which he so well merited. 
On what grounds this was done is wholly uninteresting. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 143 

It was a set of most wicked men, circumventing, and, 
if necessary, destroying each other; but, it is worthy 
of remark, that, amongst the crimes alleged against 
this great culprit, was, his having brought foreign 
troops into the kingdom ! This was, to be sure, rather 
ungrateful in the pious reformers; for, it was those 
troops that established for them their new religion. But, it 
was good to see them putting their leader to death, ac- 
tually cutting off his head, for having caused their pro- 
jects to succeed. It was, in plain words, a dispute 
about the plunder. Somerset had got more than his 
brother-plunderers deemed his share. He was build- 
ing a palace for himself; and, if each plunderer could 
have had a palace, it would have been peace amongst 
them; but, as this could not be, the rest called him a 
" traitor" and as the king, the Protestant St. Edward, 
had signed the death warrant of one uncle at the insti- 
gation of another uncle, he now signed the death war- 
rant of that other, the " Saint" himself being even now, 
only fifteen years of age! 

215. Warwick, who was now become Protector^ 
was made Duke of Northumberland , and got granted 
to him the immense estates of that ancient house, which 
had fallen into the hands of the crown. This was, if 
possible, a more zealous Protestant than the last Pro- 
tector; that is to say, still more profligate, rapacious, 
and cruel. The work of plundering the church went 
on, until there remained scarcely any thing worthy of 
the name of clergy. Many parishes were, in all parts 
of the kingdom, united in one, and having but one 
priest amongst them. But, indeed, there were hardly 
any persons left, worthy of the name of clergy. All 
the good and all the learned had either been killed , 
starved to death, banished, or had gone out of the 
country; and those who remained were, during this 
reign of mean plunder, so stripped of their incomes, 
so pared down, that the parochial clergy worked as 
carpenters, smiths, masons, and were not unfrequently 
menial servants in gentlemen's houses. So that this 
Church of England, " as by law, (and German troops,) 
established," became the scorn, not only of the people 
ef England, but of all the nations of Europe. 



144 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

216. The king, who was a poor sickly lad, seems to 
have had no distinctive characteristic except that of 
hatred to the Catholics and their religion, in which ha- 
tred Cranmer and others had brought him up. His 
life was not likely to be long, and Northumberland, 
who was now his keeper, conceived the project of get- 
ting the crown into his own family, a project quite wor- 
thy of a hero of the " Reformation." In order to car- 
ry this project into effect,, he married one of his sons. 
Lord Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, who, 
next after Mary and Elizabeth and Mary Queen of 
Scotland, was heiress to the throne. Having done 
this, he got Edward to make a will, settling the crown 
on this Lady Jane, to the exclusion of his two sisters. 
The advocates of the " Reformation," who of course, 
praise this boy-king, in whose reign the new church 
was invented, tell us long stories about the way iii 
which Northumberland persuaded " Saint Edward" 
to do this act of injustice; but, in all probability, there 
is not a word of truth in the story. However, what 
they say is this: that Lady Jane was a sincere Protest- 
ant; that the young king knew this; and that his anx- 
iety for the security of the Protestant religion induced 
him to consent to Northumberland's proposition. 

217. The settlement met with great difficulty, when 
it came to be laid before the lawyers, who somehow or 
other, always contrived to keep their heads out of the 
halter. Even Old Harry's judges used, when hard 
pressed, to refer him to the Parliament for the commit- 
ting of violations of law. The Judges, the Lord Chan- 
cellor, the Secretaries of State, the Privy Council; all 
were afraid to put their names to this transfer of the 
crown. The thing was, however, at last accomplished, 
and with the signature of Cranmer to it, though he, as 
one of the late king's executors, and the first upon that 
list, had sworn in the most solemn manner to maintain 
his will, according to which will the two sisters, in case 
of no issue by the brother, were to succeed that bro- 
ther on the throne. Thus in addition to his fourth act of 
notorious perjury, this maker of the Book of Common 
Prayer became clearly guilty of high treason. He now, 
sit last, in spite of all his craft, had woven his own hal- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 145 

ter, and that too, beyond all doubt, for the purpose of 
preserving his bishopric. The Princess Mary was 
next heir to the throne. He had divorced her mother; 
he had been the principal agent in that unjust and most 
wicked transaction; and, besides, he knew that Mary 
was immovably a Catholic, and that of course, her ac- 
cession must be the death of his office and his church. 
Therefore he now committed the greatest crime known 
to the laws, and that, too, from the 3asest of motives. 

218. The king having made this settlement, and be- 
ing kept wholly in the hands of Northumberland, who 
had placed his creatures about him, would naturally, 
as was said at the time, not live long ! In short he died 
on the 6»h of July, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his 
age and the seventh of his reign, expiring on the same 
day of the year that his savage father had brought Sir 
Thomas More to the block. These were seven of the 
most miserable and most inglorious years that England 
had ever known. Fanaticism and roguery, hypocrisy 
and plunder, divided the country between them. The 
people were wretched beyond all description; from the 
plenty of Catholic times they had been reduced to gen- 
eral beggary; and, then, in order to repress this begga- 
ry, laws the most ferocious were passed to prevent 
even starving creatures from asking aims. Abroad as 
well as at home the nation sunk in the eyes of the world. 
The town of Boulogne in France, which had been 
won by Catholic Englishmen, the base Protestant rulers 
now, from sheer cowardice, surrendered; and from one 
end of Europe to the other, were heard jeering and 
scoffing at this formerly great and lofty nation. Hume, 
who finds goodness in every one who was hostile to the 
Catholic institutions, says, " All English historians dwell 
" with pleasure on the excellencies of this young king, 
" whom the flattering promises of hope, joined to many 
" real virtues, had made an object of the most-tender 
" affections of the public. He possessed mildness of dis- 
" position, a capacity to learn and to judge, and attack- 
" merit to equity and justice" Of his mildness, we have, 
I suppose, a proof in his assenting to the burning of sev- 
eral Protestants, who did not protest in his way; in his 
signing of the death-warrants of his two uncles; and in 
13 



146 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

his wish to bring his sister Mary to trial for not con- 
forming to what she deemed blasphemy, and from doing 
which he was deterred only by the menaces of the Em- 
peror, her cousin. So much for his mildness. As for 
his justice, who can doubt of that, who thinks of his 
will to disinherit his two sisters, even after the judges 
had unanimously declared to him', that it was contrary 
to law? The " tender affection" that the people had 
for him was, doubtless evinced by their rising in insur- 
rection against his ordinances from one end of the king- 
dom to the other, and by their demanding the restoration 
of that religion which all his acts tended wholly to ex- 
tirpate. But, besides these internal proofs of the false- 
hood of Hume's description, Dr. Heylyn, who is, at 
least, one of " all the English historians," and one, too, 
whom Hume himself refers to no less than twenty-four 
times in the part of his history relating to this very reign, 
does not " dwell with pleasure on the excellencies of 
this young prince, - " of whom he, in the 4th paragraph 
of his preface, speaks thus: " King Edward, whose 
" death I cannot reckon for an infelicity to the Church 
"of England; for, being ill principled in himself and 
" easily inclined to embrace such counsels as were offered 
" him, it is not to be thought but that the rest of the 
"bishoprics, (before sufficiently impoverished,) would 
"have followed that of Durham, and the poor church 
" be left as destitute as when she came into the world 
" in her natural nakedness." Aye, but this was his great 
merit in the eyes of Hume. He should have said so 
then, and should have left his good character of tyrant 
in the egg to rest on his own opinion; and not have said, 
that " all English historians dwelt with pleasure on his 
excellencies." 

219. The settlement of the crown had been kept a 
secret from the people, and so was the death of the king 
for three whole days. In the meanwhile, Northumber- 
land, seeing the death of the young " Saint" approach- 
ing, had, in conjunction, observe, with Crammer and 
the rest of his council, ordered the two princesses to 
come near to London, under pretence that they might be- 
at hand to comfort their brother; but with the real de- 
sign of putting them into prison the moment the breath 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 141 

should be out of his body. Traitors, foul conspirators, 
villains of all descriptions, have this in common, that 
they, when necessary to their own interests, are always 
ready to bztray each other. Thus it happened here; for 
the Earl of Arundel, who was one of the council, 
and who went with Dudley and others, on the tenth of 
July, to kneel before Lady Jane as queen, had, in the 
night of the sixth, sent a secret messenger to Miry, 
who was no further off than Hoddesden, informing her 
of the death of her brother, and of the whole of the 
plot against her. Thus warned, she set off on horse- 
back, accompanied only by a few servants, to Kinning- 
hall in Norfolk, whence she proceeded to Framling- 
ham, in Suffolk, and thence issued her commands to the 
council to proclaim her as their sovereign, hinting at, but 
not positively accusing them with, their treasonable 
designs. They had, on the day before, proclaimed Lady 
Jane to be queen ! They had taken all sorts of precau- 
tions to ensure their success: army, fleet, treasure, all 
the powers of government were in their hands. They, 
therefore, returned her a most insolent answer, and 
commanded her to submit, as a dutiful subject, to the 
lawful queen, at the bottom of which command Cran- 
mer's name stood first. 

220. Honesty and sincerity exult to contemplate the 
misgivings, which, in a few hours afterwards, seized 
this band of almost unparalleled villains. The nobility 
and gentry had instantly flocked to the standard of 
Mary; and the people, even in London, who were most 
infected with the pestiferous principles of the foreign 
miscreants, that had been brought from the continent 
to teach them the new religion, had native honesty 
enough left to make them disapprove of this last and most, 
daring of robberies. Ridley, the Protestant Bishop 
of London, preached at St. Paul's, to the Lord Mayor 
and a numerous assemblage, for the purpose of per- 
suading thorn to take part against Mary; but it was 
seen that he preached in vain. Northumberland him- 
self marched from London on the thirteenth day of 
July, to attack the Queen. But in a few days, she was 
surrounded by twenty or thirty thousand men, all vo- 
lunteers in her cause, and refusing pay, Before North- 



148 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

umberland reached Bury St. Edmonds, he began to 
despair; he marched to Cambridge, and wrote to his 
brother conspirators for reinforcements. Amongst 
these, dismay first, and then perfidy began to appear. 
In a few days, these men, who had been so audacious, 
and who had sworn solemnly, to uphold the cause of 
Queen Jane, sent Northumberland an order to disband 
his army, while they themselves, proclaimed Queen 
Mary, amidst the unbounded applause of the people. 

221. The master-plotter had disbanded his army, or r 
rather, it had deserted him, before the order of the 
council reached him. This was the age of " reforma- 
tion 5 ' and of baseness. Seeing himself abandoned, he 
by the advice of Dr. Sands, the Vice Chancellor of the 
University; who, only four days before, had preached 
against Mary, went to the market place of Cambridge, 
and proclaimed her Queen, tossing, says Stowe, u his 
cap into the air in token of his joy and satisfaction." In 
a few hours afterwards he was arrested by the Queen's 
order, and that, too, by his brother conspirator, the Earl 
of Arundel, who had been one of the very first to kneel 
before Lady Jane! No reign, no age, no country, ever 
witnessed rapacity, hypocrisy, meanness, baseness, per-. 
tidy such as England witnessed in those, who were the 
destroyers of the Catholic, and the founders of the 
Protestant, Church. This Dudley, who had, for years, 
been a plunderer of the Church; who had been a pro- 
moter of every ruffian-like measure against those who 
adhered to the religion of his fathers; who had caused 
a transfer of the crown because, as he alledged, the ac- 
cession of Mary would endanger the Protestant religion ; 
this very man, when he came to receive justice on the 
block, confessed his belief in the Catholic faith; and, 
which is more, exhorted the nation to return to it. He, 
according to Dr. Heylyn, (a Protestant, mind,) ex- 
horted them " To stand to the religion of their ances- 
i: tors, rejecting that of later date, which had occasion- 
" ed all the misery of the foregoing thirty years; and 
" that, if they desired to present their souls, unspotted 
" before God, and were truly affected to their country, 
" they should expel the preachers of the reformed religion. 
" For himself" he said, " being blinded by ambition, 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 149 

" he had made a rack of his conscience, by temporizing, 
*< and so acknowledged the justice of his sentence." 
Fox, author of the lying u Book of Martyrs," of whose 
lies we shall see more by-and-by, asserts, that Dudley 
made this confession in consequence of a promise of par- 
don. But, when he came on the scaffold, he knew that 
he was not to be pardoned; and besides, he himself ex- 
pressly declared the contrary at his execution; and told 
the people, that he had not been moved by any one to 
make it, and had not done it from any hope of saving his 
life. However, we have yet to see Cranmer himself 
recant, and to see the whole band of Protestant plunder- 
ers on their knees before the Pope's legate, confessing 
their sins of heresy and sacrilege, and receiving absolu- 
tion for their offences ! 

222. Thus ended this reign of " reformation," plun- 
der, wretchedness, and disgrace. Three times the form 
of the new worship was changed, and yet those who 
adhered to the old worship, or who went beyond the 
new worship, were punished with the utmost severity. 
The nation became every day more and more despised 
abroad, and more and more distracted and miserable at 
home. The Church, " as by law established," arose 
and was enforced under two protectors, or chief minis- 
ters, both of whom deservedly suffered death as traitors. 
Its principal author was a man who had sent both Pro^ 
testants and Catholics to the stake; who had burnt peo- 
ple for adhering tothe Pope, others for not believing in 
transubstantiation, others for believing in it, and who 
now burnt others for disbelieving in it for reasons differ- 
ent from his own; a man, who now openly professed to 
disbelieve in that, for not believing in which he had 
burnt many of his fellow creatures, and who, after this 
most solemnly declared, that his own belief was that of 
these very persons! As this Church, "by law establish- 
ed," advanced, all the remains of Christian charity va- 
nished before it The indigent, whom the Catholic 
church had so tenderly gathered under her wings, were 
now, merely for asking alms, branded with red-hot irons 
and made slaves, though no provision was made to pre- 
vent them from perishing from hunger and cold; and 
England, so long famed as the land of hospitality, gene- 
13* 



150 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

rosity, ease, plenty, and security to person and proper- 
ty, became, under a Protestant Church, a scene of re- 
pulsive selfishness: of pack-horse toil, of pinching want, 
and of rapacity and plunder and tyranny, that made the 
very names of law and justice a mockery. 



LETTER VIII. 

Mary's Accession to the Throne. 

Her mild and benevolent Laws. 

The Nation reconciled to the Church. 

The Queen's great Generosity and Piety 

Her marriage with Philip. 

Fox's " Martyrs." 



Kensington., 30th June, 1 825. 
My Friends, 

223. We are now entering upon that reign, the pun- 
ishments inflicted during which have furnished such a 
handle to the calumniators of the Catholic Church, who 
have left no art untried to exaggerate those punishments 
in the first place, and, in the second place, to ascribe 
them to the Catholic Religion, keeping out of sight, all 
the while, the thousand times greater mass of cruelty oc- 
casioned by Protestants in this kingdom. Of all cruel- 
lies I disapprove. I disapprove also of all corporal 
and pecuniary punishments, on the score of religion. 
Far be it from me, therefore, to defend all the punish- 
ments inflicted, on this score, in the reign of Queen 
Mary; but, it will be my duty to show, first, that the 
mass of punishment then inflicted, on this account, has 
been monstrously exaggerated; second, that the circum- 
stances under which they were inflicted found more 
apology for the severity than the circumstances under 
which the Protestant punishments were inflicted; third- 
ly, that they were in amount as a single grain of wheat 
is to the whole bushel, compa red with the mass of pun- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 151 

lishments under the Protestant Church, "as by law es- 
tablished \ y lastly, that, be they what they might, it is a 
base perversion of reason to ascribe them to the princi- 
ples of the Catholic religion; and that, as to the Queen 
herself, she was one of the most virtuous of human 
beings, and was rendered miserable, not by her own 
disposition or misdeeds, but by the misfortune and mis- 
ery entailed on her by her two immediate predeces- 
sors, who had uprooted the institutions of the country, 
who had plunged the kingdom into confusion, and who 
had left no choice but that of making severe examples, 
or of being an encourager of, and a participator in, 
heresy, plunder, and sacrilege. Her reign our de- 
ceivers have taught us to call the reign of " BLOODY 
QUEEN MARY;" while they have taught us to call 
that of her sister, the "GOLDEN DAYS OF GOOD 
QUEEN BESS." They have taken good care never 
to tell us, that, for every drop of blood that Mary 
shed, Elizabeth shed a pint; that the former gave up 
every fragment of the plunder of which the deeds of 
her predecessors had put her in possession, and that the 
latter resumed this plunder again, and took from the 
poor every pittance which had, by oversight, been 
left them; that the former never changed her religion, 
and that the latter changed from Catholic to Protestant^ 
then to Catholic again, and then back again to Pro- 
testant; that the former punished people for departing 
from that religion in which she and they and their fa- 
thers had been born and to which she had always ad- 
hered; and that the latter punished people for not de- 
parting from the religion of her and their fathers, and 
which religion, too, she herself professed and openly 
lived in even at the time of her coronation. Yet, we 
have been taught to call the former " bloody" and the 
latter "good!' 3 How have we been deceived! And 
is it not time, then, that this deception, so injurious to 
our Catholic fellow-subjects and so debasing to our- 
selves should cease? It is, perhaps, too much to hope, 
that 1 shall be able to make it cease; but, towards ac- 
complishing this great and most desirable object, I 
shall do something at any rate, by a plain and true ac- 
count of the principal transactions of the reign of 
Mary. 



152 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

224. The Queen, who, as we have seen in paragraph 
219, was at Framlingham, in Suffolk, immediately set 
off for London, where, having been greeted on the 
road with the strongest demonstrations of joy at her 
accession, she arrived on the 31st of July, 1553. As 
she approached London the throngs thickened; Eliza- 
beth, who had kept cautiously silent while the issue 
was uncertain, went out to meet her, and the two sis- 
ters riding on horseback, entered the city, the houses 
being decorated, the streets strewed with flowers, and 
the people dressed in their gayest clothes. She was 
crowned soon afterwards, in the most splendid manner, 
and after the Catholic ritual, by Gardiner, who had, 
as we have seen, opposed Cranmer's new church, and 
whom she found a prisoner in the Tower, he having 
been deprived of his Bishoprick of Winchester; but, 
whom we are to see one of the great actors in restoring 
the Catholic religion. The joy of the people was 
boundless. It was a coronation of greater splendour 
and more universal joy than ever had before been wit- 
nessed. This is agreed on all hands. And this fact 
gives the lie to Hume, who would have us believe, 
that the people did not like the Queen's principles. 
This fact has reason on its side as well as historical au- 
thority; for, was it not natural that the people, who, 
only three years before, had actually risen in insurrec- 
tion in all parts of the kingdom against the new church 
and its authors, should be half mad with joy at the ac- 
cession of a Queen, who they were sure would put 
down that church, and put down those who had quelled 
them by aid of German Troops? 

225. Mary begain her reign by acts the most just 
and beneficent. Generously disregarding herself, her 
ease and her means of splendour, she abolished the de- 
based currency, which her father had introduced and 
her brother had made still baser; she paid the debts 
due by the crown; and she largely remitted taxes at 
the same time. But that which she had most at heart, 
was, the restoration of that religion, under the influ- 
ence of which the kingdom had been so happy and so 
great for so many ages, and since the abolition of which 
it had known nothing but discord, disgrace, and misery. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 153 

There were in her way great obstacles; for, though the 
pernicious principles of the German and Dutch and 
Swiss reformers had not, even yet, made much progress 
amongst the people, except in London, which was the 
grand scene of the operations of those hungry and fa- 
natical adventurers, there were the plunderers to deal 
with; and these plunderers had power. It is easy to 
imagine, which, indeed, was the undoubted fact, that 
the English people, who had risen in insurrection, in 
all parts of the kingdom, against Granger's new 
church; who had demanded the restoration of the mass 
and of part, at least, of the monasteries, and who had 
been silenced only by German bayonets, and halters 
and gibbets, following martial law; it is easy to ima- 
gine, that this same people would, in only three years 
afterwards, hail with joy indescribable, the prospect 
of seeing the new church put down and the ancient one 
restored, and that too, under a queen, on whose con- 
stancy and piety and integrity they could so firmly 
rely. But, the plunder had been so immense, the plun- 
derers were so numerous, they were so powerful, and 
there were so few men of family of any account, who 
had not participated, in one way or another, in deeds 
hostile to the Catholic Church, that the enterprise of 
the Queen was full of difficulty. As to Cranmer's 
Church, "by law established," that was easily dis- 
posed of. The gold and silver and cups and can- 
dlesticks and other things, of which the altar-rob- 
bers of young " Saint Edward's" reign had despoiled 
the churches, could not, indeed, be restored; but the 
altars themselves could, and speedily were, and the ta- 
bles which had been put in their stead, and the married 
priests along with them, were soon seen no longer to 
offend the eyes of the people. It is curious to observe, 
how tender-hearted Hume is upon this subject. He 
says, " Could any notion of law, justice, or reason, be 
" attended to, where superstition predominates, the 
" priests would never have been expelled for their past 
" marriages, which, at that time, were permitted by the 
"laws of the kingdom?" I wonder why- it never oc- 
curred to him to observe, that monks and nuns ought 
not, then, to have been expelled ! Were not their in- 



154 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

stations " permitted by the laws of the kingdom? 1 ? 
Aye, and had been permitted by those laws for nine 
hundred years, and guaranteed too by Magna Charta. 
He applauds the expelling of them; but this ic new 
thing," though only of three years and a half standing, 
and though " established" under a boy-king, who was 
under two protectors, each of whom was justly be- 
headed for high treason, and under a council who were 
all conspirators against the lawful sovereign; these 
married priests, the most of whom had, like Luther, 
Cranmer, Knox, Hooper, and other great " Reform- 
ers," broken their vows of celibacy, and were of 
course, perjurors; no law was to be repealed, however 
contrary to public good such law might be, if the re- 
peal injured the interests of such men as these! The 
Queen, had, however, too much justice to think thus, 
and these apostates were expelled to the great joy of 
the people, many of whom had been sabred by Ger- 
man troops, because they demanded, amongst other 
things, that priests might not be permitted to marry. 
The Catholic bishops, who had been turned out by 
Cranmer, were restored, and his new bishops were of 
course, turned out. Cranmer, himself was in a short 
time, deprived of his ill-gotten see, and was in prison, 
and most justly, as a traitor. The mass was, in all 
parts of the country, once more celebrated, the people 
w T ere no longer burnt with red-hot irons aud made slaves, 
merely for asking alms, and they began to hope that 
England would be England again, and that hospitality 
and charity would return. 

226. But, there were the plunderers to deal with! 
And, now, we are about to witness a scene, which, 
were not its existence so well attested, must pass for 
the wildest of romance. What? That parliament, who 
had declared Cranmer's divorce of Catherine to be 
lawful, and who had enacted that Mary was a bastard, 
acknowledged that same Mary to be the lawful heir to 
the throne! That Parliament which had abolished the 
Catholic worship and created the Protestant worship, 
on the ground that the former was idolatrous and damn- 
able, and the latter agreeable to the will of God* 
abolish the latter and restore the former! What? D© 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 155 

these things? And, that, too, without any force; with- 
out being compelled to do them? No: not exactly so: 
for it had the people to fear, a vast majority of whom 
were cordially with the Queen as far as related to 
these matters, respecting which it is surprising what 
dispatch, was made. The late King died only in July, 
and, before the end of the next November, all the work 
of Cranmer as to the divorce as well as to the worship, 
was completely overset, and that too, by Acts of the 
very Parliament who had confirmed the one and "es- 
tablished" the other. The first of these acts declared^ 
that, Henry and Catherine had been lawfully married, 
and it laid all the blame upon Cranmer by name! 
The second Act called the Protestant Church, "as by 
law established,''' a " new thing imagined by a few sin- 
gular opinions" though the parliament, when it estab- 
lished it, asserted it to have come from "the Holy 
Ghost." What was now said of it was true enough: 
T)ut it might have been added, established by German 
bayonets. The great inventor, Cranmer, who was, at 
last, in a fair way of receiving the just reward of his 
numerous misdeeds, could only hear of the overthrow 
of his work; for, having, though clearly as guilty of 
high treason as Dudley himself, been, as yet, only 
confined to his palace at Lambeth, and hearing that 
mass had been celebrated in his Cathedral Church of 
Canterbury, he put forth a most inflammatory and abu- 
sive declaration, (which, mind, he afterwards recanted,) 
for which declaration, as well as for his treason, he was 
committed to the Tower, where he lay at the time when 
these Acts were passed. But, the new Church required 
no law to abolish it. It was, in fact, abolished by the 
general feeling of the nation; and, as we shall see in 
the next Number, it required rivers of blood to re-es- 
tablish it in the reign of Elizabeth. Hume following 
Fox, the " Martyr"-man, complains bitterly of " the 
tc court" for its " contempt of the laws, in celebrating, 
" before the two Houses, at the opening of the Parlia- 
" meat, a mass of Latin, with all the ancient rites and 
" ceremonies, though abolished by Jict of Parliament." 
Abolished! Why so, had Cromwell and his canting 
crew abolished the kingly government by Act of Par- 



156 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

liament, and by the bayonet; and yet this did not induce 
Charles to wait for a repeal before he called himself 
king. Nor did the bringers-over of the " deliverer," 
William, wait for an Act of Parliament to authorise 
them to introduce the said " deliverer." The " new 
thing" fell of itself. It had been forced upon the peo- 
ple, and they hated it. 

221. But, when the question came, whether the Par- 
liament should restore the Papal Supremacy, the -plun- 
der was at stake; for, to take the Church property was 
sacrilege, and, if the Pope regained his power in the 
kingdom, he might insist on restitution. The greater 
part of this property had been seized on eighteen years 
before. In many cases it had been divided and sub-di- 
vided; in many, the original grantees were dead. The 
common people, too, had, in many cases, become de- 
pendents on the new proprietors; and, besides, they 
could not so easily trace the connexion between their 
faith and that supremacy, as they could between their 
faith and the mass and the sacraments. The Queen, 
therefore, though she most anxiously wished to avoid 
giving, in any way whatever, her sanction to the plun- 
der, was reduced to the necessity of risking a civil war 
for the Pope's supremacy; to leave her kingdom unre- 
conciled to the Church; and to keep to herself the title 
of Head of the Church, to her so hateful; or to make a 
compromise with the plunderers. She was induced to pre- 
fer the latter, though it is by no means certain that civil 
war would not have been better for the country, even 
if it had ended in the triumph of the plunderers, which, 
in ali human probability, it would not. But, observe in 
in bow forlorn a state, as to this question, she was 
placed. There was scarcely a nobleman, or gentleman 
.of any note, in her kingdom, who had not, in one way 
or another, soiled his hands with the plunder. The Ca- 
tholic bishops, ail but Fisher, had assented to the abo- 
lition of the Pope's supremacy. Bishop Gardiner, who 
was now her High Chancellor, was one of these, 
though he had been deprived of his bishoprick, and im- 
prisoned in the tower, because he opposed Cranmer's 
further projects. These Catholic bishops, and Gardi- 
ner especially, must naturally wish to get over this mat- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 157 

ter as quietly as possible; for, bow was he to advise the 
Queen to risk a civil war for the restoration of that, the 
abolition of which he had so fully assented to, and so 
strenuously supported? And how was she to do any 
thing without councillors of some sort? 

228. Nevertheless the Queen, whose zeal was equal to 
her sincerity, was bent on the restoration; and, therefore, 
a compromise with the plunderers was adopted. JVoip, 
then, it was fully proved to all the world, and now this 
plundered nation, who had been reduced to the greatest 
misery by what had beenimpudenly called the "Reform- 
ation," saw as clearly as they saw the light of day, that 
all those who had abetted the " Reformation;" that all 
the railings against the Pope; that all the accusations 
against the monks and nuns; that all the pretences of 
abuses in the Catholic Church; that all the confiscations, 
sackings, and bloodshed; that all these, from first to last, 
had proceeded from the love of plunder ; for, now, the 
two houses of parliament, who had, only about three or 
four years before, established Cranmer's Church, and 
declared it to be " the work of the Holy Ghost;" now 
these pious " Reformation" men, having first made a 
firm bargain to keep the plunder, confessed, (to use the 

words even of Hume,) u that they had been guilty of a 
" most horrible defection, from the true Church; profes- 
" sed their sincere repentance for their past transgress 
" sions; and declared their resolution to repeal all laws 
" enacted in prejudice of the Pope's authority!" Are the 
people of England aware of this ? No : not one man 
out of fifty thousand. These, let it be remembered, 
were the men who made the Protestant Religion in Eng- 
land! 

229. But this is a matter of too much importance to 
be dismissed without the mention of some particulars. 
The Queen had not about her one single man of any 
eminence, who had not, in some degree departed from 
the straight path, during one or the other, or both, of 
the two last reigns. But there was Cardinal Pole, of 
whom, and of the butchery of whose aged and brave 
mother, we have seen an account in paragraph 115. — 
He still remained on the Continent; but now he could 
"with safety return to his native country, on which the. 

14 



158 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

fame of his talents and virtues reflected so much honour. 
The Cardinal was appointed by the Pope to be his Le- 
gate^ or representative, in England. The Queen had 
been married on the 25th of July, 1554, to Philip, 
Prince of Spain, son and heir of the Emperor, Charles 
V. of which marriage I shall speak more fully by-and- 

230. In November, the same year, a Parliament was 
called, and was opened with a most splendid procession 
of the two houses, closed by the King and Queen, the 
first on horseback, the last in a litter, dressed in robes of 
purple. Their first act was a repeal of the attainder of 
Pole, passed in the reign of the cruel Henry VIII. — 
While this was going on, many noblemen and gentle- 
men had gone to Brussels, to conduct Pole to England; 
and it is worth observing, that amongst these was that 
Sir William Cecil, who was afterwards so bitter and 
cruel an enemy of the Catholics and their religion, in 
the reign of Elizabeth. Pole was received at Dover 
with every demonstration of public joy and exultation; 
and before he reached Gravesend, where he took water 
for Westminster, the gentlemen of the country had 
nocked to his train, to the number of nearly two thou- 
sand horsemen. Here is a fact, which, amongst thou- 
sands of others, shows what the populousness and opu- 
lence of England then were. 

231. On the 29th of November, the two houses peti- 
tioned the King and Queen. In this petition they ex- 
pressed their deep regret at having been guilty of de- 
fection from the Church; and prayed their Majesties, 
who had not participated in the sin, to intercede with the 
Holy Father, the Pope, for their forgiveness, and for 
their re-admission into the fold of Christ. The next 
day, the Queen being seated on the throne, having the 
King on her left, and Pole, the Pope's legate, on her 
right, the Lord High Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, 
read the petition; the King and Queen then spoke to 
Pole, and he, at the close of a long speech, gave, in the 
name of the Pope, to the two Houses, and to the whole 
nation, absolution, iw the name of the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, at which words the members of the two 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 159 

Houses, being on their knees, made the hall resound 
with AMEN ! 

232. Thus was England once more a Catholic country. 
She was restored to the " fold of Christ;" but the fold 
had been plundered of its hospitality and charity; and 
the plunderers before they pronounced the " ttmm," had 
taken care, that the plunder should not be restored. 
The Pope had hesitated to consent to this; Cardinal 
Pole, who was a man full of justice, had hesitated still 
longer; but; as we have seen before, Gardiner, who 
was now the Queen's prime minister, and, indeed, all 
her council, were for the compromise; and, therefore, 
these " amen" people, while they confessed that they 
had sinned by that defection, in virtue of which defection, 
and of that alone, they got the property of the Church 
and the poor; while they prayed for absolution for that 
sin; while they rose from their knees to join the Queen 
in singing Te Deum in thanksgiving for that absolution; 
while they were doing these things, they enacted, that 
all the holders of Church property should keep it, and 
that any person who should attempt to molest or dis- 
turb them therein, should be deemed guilty of praemunire^ 
and be punished accordingly ! 

233. It, doubtless, went to the heart of the Queen to 
assent to this act, which was the very ivorst deed of her 
whole reign, the monstrously exaggerated fires of Smith- 
field not excepted. We have seen how she was situated 
as to her councillors, and particularly as to Gardiner, 
who, besides being a most zealous and active minister, 
was a man of the greatest talents. We have seen, that there 
was scarcely a man of any note, who had not, first or 
last, partook of the plunder; but still, great as her diffi- 
culty certainly was, she would have done bettor to fol- 
low the dictates of her own mind, insisting upon doing 
what was fight, and leaving the consequences to God, 
us she had so nobly done, when Cranmer and the rest 
of the base council of Edward VI. commanded her to 
desist from hearing mass and most cruelly took her 
chaplains from her. 

234. However, she was resolved, to keep none oftlte 
plunder herself Old Harry, as " Head of the Church," 
bad taken to himself the tenths and first fruits; that is to 



160 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

say,' the tenth part of the annual worth of each church 
benefice and the first whole year's income of each. 
These had, of course, been kept by King Edward. 
Then there were, some of the Church estates, some of 
the hospitals and other things, and these amounting to a 
large sum altogether, that still belonged to the crown; 
and of which the Queen was, of course, the possessor. 
In November, 1555, she gave up to the Church the 
tenths and first fruits, which, together with the tithes, 
which her two immediate predecessors had seized on 
and kept, were worth about 63,000/. a year in mo- 
ney of that day, and were equal to about*a million & 
year of our present money ! Have we ever heard of any 
other sovereign doing the like? " Good Queen Bess" we 
shall find taking them back again to herself; and, though 
we shall find Queen Anne giving them up to the Churchy 
we are to bear in mind, that, in Mary's days, the Crown 
and its officers, ambassadors, judges, pensioners, and all 
employed by it, were supported out of the landed estate 
of the Crown, itself, the remains of which estate we now 
see in the pitiful rest of "Crown-lands." Taxes were, 
never, in those days, called for, but for wars, and other 
really national purposes; and Mary was Queen two 
years and a half, before she imposed upon her people a 
single farthing of tax in any shape whatever! So that 
this act of surrendering the tenths and first fruits was 
the effect of her generosity and piety; and of hers alone 
too; for it was done against the remonstrances of her 
council, and it was not without great opposition that the 
bill passed in parliament, where it was naturally feared 
that this just act of the Queen would awaken the peo- 
ple's hatred of the plunderers. But the Queen perse- 
vered, saying, that she would be "Defender of the Faith"*- 
in reality, and not merely in name. This was the wo- 
man, whom we have been taught to call u the Bloody 
Queen Mary!" 

235. The Queen did not stop here, but proceeded to 
restore all the Church and Abbey lands, which were in 
her possession, being, whatever might be the conse- 
quence to her, firmly resolved not to be a possessor of 
the plunder. Having called some members of her coun- 
cil together, she declared her resolution to them, and 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 161 

bade them prepare an account of those lands and pos- 
sessions, that she might know what measures to adopt 
for the putting of her intention in execution. Her inten- 
tion was to apply the revenues as nearly as possible, to 
their ancient purposes. She began with Westminster 
Jlbbey, which had, in the year 610, been the site of a 
church immediately after the introduction of Christiani- 
ty by St. Austin, which Church had been destroyed 
by the Danes, and, in 958, restored by King Edward and 
St. Dunstan, who placed twelve Benedictine monks in 
it: and which became, under Edward the Confessor, in 
1049, a noble and richly endowed abbey, which, when 
plundered and suppressed by Henry, had revenues to 
the amount of 3977Z. a year of good old rent, in money 
of that clay, and, therefore, equal to about eighty thou- 
sand pounds a year of money of this day ! Little of 
this, however, remained, in all probability, to the Queen, 
the estates, having, in great part, been parcelled out 
amongst the plunderers of the two last reigns. But, 
whatever there remained to her she restored; and West- 
minster Abbey once more saw a convent of Benedictine 
monks within its walls She next restored the Friary 
at Greenwich, to which had belonged friars Peyto and 
Elstow, whom we have seen in paragraphs 81 and 32, 
so nobly pleading, before the tyrant's face, the cause of 
her injured mother, for which they had felf the fury of 
that ferocious tyrant. She re-established the Black- 
Friars in London. She restored the Nunnery at Sion 
near Brentford, on the spot where Sion- House now 
stands. At Sheen she restored the Priory. She restor» 
ed and liberally endowed the Hospital of St. John, 
Smithfield. She re-established the Hospital in the Sa- 
voy, for the benefit of the poor, and allotted to it a suit- 
able yearly revenue out of her own purse; and, as her 
example would naturally have great effect, it is, as Dr. 
Heylyn, (a Protestant, and a great enemy of her memo- 
ry,) observes, " hard to say how far the nobility and 
" gentry might have done the like, if the Queen had 
' ■ lived some few years longer." 

236. These acts were so laudible, so unequivocally 
good, so clearly the effect of justice, generosity and 
charity, in the Queen, that coming before us, as they 
14* 



162 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

do, in company with great zeal for the Catholic religion, 
we are naturally curious to hear what remarks they 
bring from the unfeeling and malignant Hume. Of her 
own free-will, and even against the wish of very power- 
ful men, she gave up, in this way, a yearly revenue of 
probably not less than a million and a half of pounds 
of our present money. And for what? Because she 
held it unjustly; because it was plunder; because it had 
been taken to the Crown in violation of Magna Charta 
and all the laws and usages of the realm; because she 
hoped to be able to make a beginning in the restoring of 
that hospitality and charity which her predecessors had 
banished from the land; and because her conscience, as 
die herself declared, forbade her to retain these ill-got- 
ten possessions, valuing, as she did, (she told her coun- 
cil,) " her conscience more than ten kingdoms." Was 
there ever a more praise-worthy act? And, were there 
ever motives more excellent? Yet Hume, who extdts 
in the act which the plunders insisted on, to secure their 
plunder, calls this noble act of the queen an "impudent™ 
one, and ascribes it solely to the influence of the new 
Pope, who, he tells us, told her ambassadors, that the 
English would never have the doors of Paradise open- 
ed to them, unless the whole of the Church property was 
restored. How false this is, in spite of Humf/s authori- 
ties, is clear from this undeniable fact; namely, that she 
gave the Tenths and First Fruits to the Bishops and 
Priests of the Church in England, and not to the Fope y 
to whom they were formerly paid. This, therefore, is 
a malignant misrepresentation. Then again, he says, 
that the Pope's remonstrances on this score, had "little 
influence with the nation.™ With the plunderers, he 
means; for, he has been obliged to confess, that, in all 
parts of the country, the people, in Edward's reign, de- 
manded a restoration of a part of the monasteries; and, is 
it not clear, then, that they must have greatly rejoiced 
to see their sovereign make a beginning in that restora- 
tion? But, it was his business to lessen, as much as pos- 
sible, the merits of these generous and pious acts of this 
basely calumniated queen. 

237. Events soon proved to this just and good, but 
singularly unfortunate, queen, that she would have d©B£ 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 163 

Letter to risk a civil war against the plunderers than as- 
sent to the Act of Parliament by which was secured to 
them the quiet possession of their plunder. Her gene- 
rous example had no effect upon them; bat on the con- 
trary, made them dislike her, because it exposed them 
to odium, presenting a contrast with their own conduct^ 
so much to their disadvantage. From this cause, more 
than from any other, arose those troubles, which haras- 
sed her during the remainder of her short reign 

238. She had not been many months on the throne be- 
fore a rebellion was raised against her, instigated by 
the " Reformation^' preachers, who had bawled in fa- 
vour of Lady Jane Grey, but who now discovered, 
amongst other things, that it was contrary to God's 
word to be governed by a woman. The fighting rebels 
were defeated, and the leaders executed, and, at the 
same time, the Lady Jane herself, who had been con- 
victed of high treason, who had been kept in prison, 
but whose life had hitherto been spared, and would 
evidently still have been spared, if it had not man- 
manifestly tended to keep alive the hopes of the traitors 
and disaffected. And, as this Queen has been called 
" the bloody" is another instance to be found of so 
much lenity shown towards one who had been guilty of 
treason to the extent of actually proclaiming herself the 
sovereign? There was another rebellion afterwards, 
which was quelled in like manner, and was followed by 
the execution of the principal traitors, who had been 
abetted by a Protestant faction in France, if not by the 
Government of that country, which was bitterly hos- 
tile towards the Queen on account of her marriage 
with Philip, the Prince of Spain, which marriage be- 
came a great subject of invective and false accusation 
with the Protestants and disaffected of all sorts. 

239. The Parliament, almost immediately after her 
accession, advised her to marry; but not to marry a 

foreigner. How strangely our taste is changed! The 
English had always a deep-rooted prejudice against 
foreigners, till, for pure love of the Protestant religion, 
they looked out for, and soon felt the sweets of one 
who began the work of funding, and of making na- 
tional debts f The queen however, after great delibe- 
ration, determined to marry Philip, who was son aed 



164 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

heir of the Emperor Charles V. and who though a widow- 
er, and having children by his first wife, was still much 
younger than the Queen, who was now, (in July, 1554,) 
in the 39th year of her age, while Philip was only 27. 
Philip arrived at Southampton in July, 1554, escorted 
by the combined fleets of England, Spain, and the 
Netherlands; and on the 25th of that Month the mar- 
riage took place in the Cathedral of Winchester, the 
ceremony being performed by Gardiner, who was the 
Bishop of the see, and being attended by great num- 
bers of nobles from all parts of Christendom. To 
show how little reliance is to be placed on Hume, I 
will here notice, that he says the marriage took place 
at Westminster, and to this adds many facts equally 
false. His account of the whole of this transaction is 
a mere romance, made up from Protestant writers, 
even whose accounts he has shamefully distorted to the 
prejudice of the views and character of the Queen. 

240. As things then stood, sound and evident good 
to England dictated this match. Leaving out Eliza- 
beth, the next heir to the throne was Mary Queen of 
Scots, and she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France; 
so that England might fall to the lot of the French 
king; and, as to Elizabeth, even supposing her to sur- 
vive the Queen, she now stood bastardized by two 
Acts of Parliament; for the Act which had just been 
passed, declaring Catherine to be the lawful wife of 
her father; made her mother, (what indeed Cranmer 
had declared her,) an adultress in law, as she was in 
fact. Besides, if France and Scotland were evidently 
likely to become the patrimony of one and the same 
prince, it was necessary that England should take steps 
for strengthening herself also in the way of prepara- 
tion. Such was the policy that dictated this celebrated 
match, which the historical calumniators of Mary have 
attributed to the worst and most low and disgusting of 
motives; in which, however, they have only followed 
the example of the malignant traitors of the times we 
are referring to, it being only to be lamented that they 
were not then alive to share in their fate. 

241. Nothing ever was, nothing could be, more to 
the honour of England than every part of this transac- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 165 

lion; yet, did it form the pretences of the traitors of 

tthat day, who, for the obvious reasons mentioned in 
the last paragraph, were constantly encouraged and 
abetted by France, and as constantly urged on by the 
disciples of Cranmer and his crew of German and 
Dutch teachers. When the rebels had, at one time, 
previous to Mary's marriage, advanced even to London, 
she went to ihe Guildhall, where she told the citizens, 
that, if she thought the marriage were injurious to her 
people, or to the honour of the state, she would not as- 
sent to it; and that, if it should not appear to the Par- 
liament to be for the benefit of the whole kingdom, she 
would never marry at all. "Wherefore," said she, 
" stand fast against these rebels, your enemies and 
" mine; fear them not; for I assure ye, that I fear them 
" nothing at all." Thus she left them, leaving the Hall 
resounding with their- acclamations. 

242. When the marriage articles appeared, it was 
shown, that, on this occasion, as on all others, the queen 
had kept her word most religiously : for even Humb 
is obliged to confess, that these articles were "as fa- 
" vourable as possible for the interest and security, and 
" even the grandeur of England." W T hat more was 
wanted, then? And if, «s Hume says was the case, 
" these articles gave no satisfaction to the nation, all 
that we can say, is, that the nation was very unreason- 
able and ungrateful. This is, however, a great false- 
hood; for; what Hume here ascribes to the whole na- 
tion, he ought to have confined to the plunderers and the 
fanatics, whom, throughout his romance of this reign, 
he always calls the nation. The articles quoted from 
Rymer by Hume himself, w r ere that, though Philip 
should have the title of king, the administration should 
be wholly in the Queen; that no foreigner should hold 
any office in the kingdom; that no change should be 
made in the English laws, customs, and privileges; that 
sixty thousand pounds a year, (a million of our present 
money,) should be settled on the Queen as her jointure, 
to be paid by Spain if she outlived him; that the male, 
issue of this marriage should inherit, together with 
England, both Burgundy and the Low Countries; and 
that, if Don Carlos, Philip's, son by his former mar- 



166 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

riage, should die leaving no issue, the Queen's issue,, 
whether male or female, should inherit Spain, Sicily, 
Milan, with all the other dominions of Philip. Just 
before the marriage ceremony was performed, an en- 
voy from the Emperor, Philip's father, delivered to the 
English Chancellor, a deed resigning to his son the 
kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan, the Em- 
peror thinking it beneath the dignity of the queen of 
England to marry one that was not a king. 

243. What transaction was ever more honourable to 
a nation than this transaction was to England? What 
Queen, what sovereign, ever took more care of the glo- 
ry of a people? Yet the fact appears to be, that there 
was some jealousy in the nation at large, as to this for- 
eign connexion; and, I am not one of those who are 
disposed to censure this jealousy. But, can I have the 
conscience to commend, or, even to abstain from cen- 
suring, this jealousy in our Catholic forefathers, without 
feeling as a Protestant, my cheeks burn with shame at 
what has taken place in Protestant times, and even in 
my own time ! When another Mary, a Protestant Ma- 
ry was brought to the throne, did the Parliament take 
care to keep the administration wholly in her, and to 
give her husband the mere title of king? Did they take 
care then that no foreigners should hold offices in Eng- 
land? Oh, no! That foreign, that Dutch husband, had 
the administration vested in him ; and he brought over 
whole crowds of foreigners, put them into the highest 
offices, gave them the highest titles, and heaped upon 
them large parcels of what was left of the Crown es- 
tate, descending to that Crown, in part at least, from 
the days of Alfred himself ! And this transaction is 
called "glorious;" and that, too, by the very men who 
talk of the " inglorious" reign of Mary ! What, then, 
are sense and truth never to reign in England? Are 
we to be duped unto all generations? 

244. And, if we come down to our own dear Protestant 
days, do we find the Prince of Sake Cobourg, the 
heir to mighty dominions ? Did he bring into the coun- 
try, as Philip did, twenty-nine chests of bullion, load* 
ing to the Tower, 22 carts and 9$ pack-horses ? Do we 
fed him, settling on his wife's issue great states ami 



TROTESTANT REFORMATION, 167 

kingdoms ? Do we find his father making him a king, 
on the eve of the marriage, because a person of lower 
title would be beneath a Queen of England ? Do we 
find him giving his bride, as a bridal present, jewels to 
the amount of half a million of our money f Do we 
find him settling on the Princess Charlotte a jointure of 
a million sterling a year, if she should outlive him? 
No; but, (and come and boast of it, you shameless re- 
vilers of this Catholic Queen!) we find our Protestant 
parliament settling ON HIM fifty thousand pounds a 
year, to come out of taxes raised on us, if he should 
outlive her; which sum we now duly and truly pay in 
full tale, and shall possibly have to pay it for forty years 
yet to come ! How we feel ourselves shrink, when we 
thus compare our conduct with that of our Catholic 
fathers ! 

245. In my relation, I have not adhered to the exact 
chronological order, which would have too much brok- 
en my matter into detached parcels; but, I should here 
observe, that the marriage was previous to the reconci- 
liation with the Pope, and also previous to the Queen's 
generous restoration of the property, which she held, 
of the church and the poor. It was also previous to 
those dreadful punishments which she inflicted upon he- 
retics, of which punishments I am now about to speak, 
and which, though monstrously exaggerated by the ly- 
ing Fox and others, though a mere nothing compared 
with those inflicted, afterwards on Catholics by Eliza- 
beth, and though hardly to be called cruel, when set in 
comparison with the rivers of Catholic blood that have 
flowed in Ireland, were, nevertheless, such as to be 
deeply deplored by every one, and by nobody more than 
the Catholics, whose religion, though these punish- 
ments were by no means caused by its principles, has 
been reproached as the cause, and the sole cause, of 
the whole of them. 

246. We have seen, in paragraphs 200 and 201, 
what a Babel of opinions and of religions had been in- 
troduced by Cranmer and his crew; and we have 
also seen, that immorality, that vice of all sorts, that 
enmity and strife incessant, had been the consequence. 
Besides this, it was so natural that the Queeu should de- 



I6S PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

sire to put down all these sects, and that she should be 
so anxious on the subject, that we are not at all sur- 
prised that, if she saw all other means ineffectual for 
the purpose, she should resort to means of the utmost 
severity that the laws of the land allowed of, for the 
accomplishment of that purpose. The traitors and the 
leading rebels of her reign were all, or affected to be, 
of the new sects. Though small in number, they made 
up for that disadvantage by their indefatigable maligni- 
ty; by their incessant efforts to trouble the state, and 
indeed, to destroy the Queen herself. But, I am for 
rejecting all apologies for her, founded on provocations 
given to her; and also for rejecting all apologies 
founded on the disposition and influence of her coun- 
cillors ; for, if she had been opposed to the burning of 
heretics, that burning would, certainly never have taken 
place. That burning is fairly to be ascribed to her; 
but, as even the malignant Hume gives her credit for 
sincerity, is it not just to conclude, that her motive was 
to put an end to the propagation, amongst her people, 
of errors which she deemed destructive of their souls, 
and the permission of the propagation of which she 
deemed destructive of her own? And, there is this 
much to be said in defence of her motive, at any rate, 
that these new lights, into however many sects they 
might be divided, all agreed in teaching the abomi- 
nable doctrine of salvation by faith alone, without re- 
gard to works. 

241. As a preliminary to the punishment of heretics 
there was an Act of Parliament passed in December, 
1554, (a year and a half after the Queen came to the 
throne,) to restore the ancient statutes, relative to heresy. 
These statutes were first passed against the Lollards, 
in the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. And they 
provided, that heretics, who were obstinate, should be 
burnt These statutes were altered in the reign of Hen- 
ry VIII. in order that he might get the property of here- 
tics, and, in that of Edward, they were repealed. Not 
out of mercy, however; but, because heresy was, accord- 
ing to those statutes, to promulgate opinions contrary 
to the Catholic Faith ; and this did, of course, not suit 
the state of things under the new church, " as by law es- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION^ 169 

tnhlished." Therefore, it was then held, that heresy 
was punishable by common law, and, that, in case of ob- 
stinacy, heretics might be burnt; and, accordingly, 
many were punished and some burnt in that reign, by pro- 
cess at common law; and these were too, Protestants 
dissenting from Cranmer's Church, who himself con- 
demned them to the flames. Now, however, the Ca- 
tholic religion being again the religion of the country, 
it was thought necessary to return to ancient statutes; 
which accordingly, were re-enacted. That which had 
been the- law, during seven reigns, comprising nearly 
two centuries, and some of which reigns had been 
amongst the most glorious and most happy that England 
had ever known, one of the Kings having won the title 
of King of France, and another of them having actual- 
ly been crowned at Paris; that which had been the 
law for so long a period was now the law again: so 
that here was nothing new, at any rate. And, observe, 
though these statutes were again repealed, when Eliza- 
beth's pdicy induced her to be a Protestant, she 
enacted others to supply their place, and that both she 
and her successor James I., burnt heretics; though 
they had, as we shall see, a much more expeditious and 
less noisy way of putting out of the world those who 
still had the constancy to adhere to the religion of their 
fathers. 

248. The laws, being passed, were not likely to re- 
main a dead letter. They were put in execution 
chiefly in consequence of condemnations in the spirit- 
ual court, by Bonner, Bishop of London. The pun- 
ishment was inflicted in the usual manner; dragging to 
the place of execution, and then burning to death, the 
sufferer being tied to a stake, in the midst of a pile of 
faggots, which when set on fire, consumed him. Bishop 
Gardiner, the Chancellor, has been by Protestant 
writers, charged with being the adviser of this measure. 
I can find no ground for this charge, while all agree, 
that Pole, who was now become Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, in the place of Cranmer, disapproved of it. 
It is also undeniable, that a Spanish friar, the confessor 
of Philip, preaching before the queen, expressed his 
disapprobation of it. Now, as the queen was much 
15 



170 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

more likely to be influenced, if at all, by Pole, and es- 
pecially by Philip, than by Gardiner, the fair pre- 
sumption is, that it was her own measure. And, as to 
Bonner, on whom so much blame has been thrown on 
this account, he had, indeed, been most cruelly used by 
Cranmer and his Protestants ; but, there was the 
Council continually accusing all the Bishops, (and he 
more than any of the rest,) of being too slow in the per- 
formance of this part of their duty. Indeed, it is man- 
ifest, that in this respect, the Council spoke the almost 
then universal sentiment; for, though the French ceased 
not to hatch rebellions against the queen, none of 
the grounds of the rebels ever were, that she punished 
heretics. Their complaints related almost solely to the 
connexion with Spain ; and never to the "flames of 
Smithfield" though we of latter times have been made 
to believe, that nothing else was thought of; but, the 
fact is, the persons put to death were chiefly of very 
infamous character, many of them foreigners, almost 
the whole of them residing in London, and called, in 
derision by the people at large, the "London Gospellers." 
Doubtless, out of two hundred and seventy-seven per- 
sons, (the number stated by Hume on authority of Fox,) 
who were thus punished, some may have been real 
martyrs to their opinions, and have been sincere and 
virtuous persons; but, in this number of 277, many 
were convicted felons, some clearly traitors, as Ridley 
and Cranmer. These must be taken from the num- 
ber; and, we may, surely, take such as were alive when 
Fox first published his book, and who expressly begged 
to decline the honour of being enrolled amongst his 
"Martyrs." As a proof of Fox's total disregard of 
truth, there was in the next reign, a Protestant parson, 
as Anthony Wood, (a Protestant,) tells us, who, in a 
sermon, related on authority of Fox, that a Catholic of 
the name of Grimwood had been, as Fox said, a great 
enemy of the Gospellers, had been "punished by a 
judgment of God," and that his "bowels fell out of his 
body." GRiMwood was not only alive at the time when 
the sermon was preached, but happened to be present 
in the church to hear it ; and he brought an action of 
defamation against the preacher ! Another instance of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 171 

Fox's 'falseness relates to the death of Bishop Gar- 
diner. Fox and Burnet, and other vile calumniators 
of the acts and actors in queen Mary's reign, say, that 
Gardiner, on the day of the execution of Latimer 
and Ridley, kept dinner waiting till the news of their 
suffering should arrive, and that the Duke of Norfolk, 
who was to dine with him, expressed great chagrin at 
the delay; that, when the news came, " transported 
with joy," they sat down to table, where Gardiner 
was suddenly seized with the disury, and died, in horri- 
ble torments, in a fortnight afterwards. Now Lati- 
mer and Ridley were put to death on the 16th of Oc- 
tober; and Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, p. 
386, states, that Gardiner opened the parliament on the. 
21st of October; that he attended in Parliament twice 
afterwards; that he died on the 12th of November, of 
the gout, and not of disury ; and that, as to the Duke of 
Norfolk, lie had been dead a year, when this event took 
place! What a hypocrite, then, must that man be, who 
pretends to believe in this Fox! Yet, this infamous 
book has, by the arts of the plunderers and their de- 
scendants, been circulated to a boundless extent amongst 
the people of England, who have been taught to look 
upon all the thieves, felons, and traitors, whom Fox 
calls " Martyrs" as sufferers resembling St. Stephen, 
St. Peter, and St. Paul! 

249. The real truth about these " Martyrs," is, that 
they were, generally, a set of most wicked wretches, 
who sought to destroy the queen and her government, 
and, under the pretence of conscience and superior piety , 
to obtain the means of again preying upon the people. 
No mild means could reclaim them: those means had 
been tried: the queen had to employ vigorous means, 
or, to suffer her people to continue to be torn by the 
religious factions, created, not by her, but by her two 
immediate predecessors, who had been aided and 
abetted by many of those who now were punished, and 
who were worthy of ten thousand deaths each, if ten 
thousand deaths could have been endured. They were, 
without a single exception, apostates, perjurers, or plun- 
derers ; and, the greater part of them had also been 
guilty of flagrant high treason against Mary herself, 



172 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

who had spared their lives; but whose lenity they had 
requited by every effort within their power to overset 
her authority and her government. To make particu- 
lar mention of all the ruffians that perished upon this 
occasion, would be a task as irksome as it would be 
useless; but, there were amongst them, three of C'ran- 
.mer's Bishops and himself! For now, justice, at last y 
overtook this most mischievous of all villains, who had 
justly to go to the same stake that he h&dunjitstly caused 
so many others to be tied to; the three others were 
Hooper, Latimer, and Ridley, each of whom was 
indeed inferior in villainy to Cranmer, but to few other 
men thai have ever existed. 

250. Hooper was a Monk; he broke his vow of ce- 
libacy and married a Flandrican; he, being the ready 
tool of the Protector Somerset, whom he greatly aided 
in his plunder of the churches, got two Bishopritks, 
though he himself had written against pluralities ; he 
was a co-operator in all the monstrous cruelties inflict- 
ed on the people, during the reign of Edward, and was 
particularly active in recommending the use of German 
troops to bend the necks of the English to the Protes- 
tant yoke. Latimer began his career, not only as a 
Catholic priest, but as 'a most furious assailant of the 
Reformation religion. By this he obtained from Henry 
Vill. the Bishoprick of Worcester. He next changed 
his opinions ; but, he did not give up his Catholic bish- 
oprick! Being suspected, he made abjuration of Pro- 
icstaniSm ; he thus kept his bishoprick for twenty 
years, while he inwardly reprobated the principles of 
the Church, and which bishoprick he held in virtue of 
an oath to oppose, to the utmost of his power, all dis- 
senters from the Catholic Church; in the reigns of Hen- 
ry and Edward, he sent to the stake Catholics and Pro- 
testants for holding opinions, which he himself had be- 
fore held openly, or that he held secretly at the time of 
his so sending them. Lastly, he was a chief tool in the 
hands of the tyrannical Protector Somerset in that 
black and unnatural act of bringing his brother, Lord 
Thomas Somerset, to the block. Ridley had been 
a Catholic bishop in the reign of Henry VIII., when he 
gent to the stake. Catholics who denied the king's su- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 173 

frtemacy, and Protestants, who denied transubstantia- 
tion. In Edward's reign he was a Protestant bishop, 
and denied transubstantiation himself; and then he sent 
to the stake Protestants who differed from the creed of 
Cranmer. He, in Edward's reign, got the Bishoprick 
of London by -a most roguish agreement to transfer 
the greater part of its possessions to the rapacious minis- 
ters and courtiers of that day. Lastly, he was guilty of 
high treason against the queen, in openly, (as we have- 
seen in paragraph 220,) and from the pulpit, exhorting 
the people to stand by the usurper, Lady Jane; and 
thus endeavouring to produce civil war and the deatk 
of his sovereign, in order that he might, by treason, be 
enabled to keep that bishoprick which he had obtained 
by Simony, including perjury. 

251. A pretty trio of Protestant "Saints," quite 
worthy, however, of ' c Saint" Martin Luther, who 
says, in his own works, that it was by the arguments of 
the JDail, (who, he says, frequently ate, drank, and slept 
with him,) that he was induced to turn Protestant: three 
worthy followers of that Luther, who is, by his dis- 
ciple Melancthon, called " a brutal man, void of piety 
and humanity, one more a Jew than a Christian:" three 
followers altogether worthy of this great founder of that 
Protestantism, which has split the world into contending 
sects: but, black as these are, they bleach, the moment 
Cranmer appears in his true colours. But alas! where 
is the pen, or tongue, to give us those colours ! Of the 
65 years that he lived and of the 35 years of his man- 
hood, 29 years were spent in the commission of a se- 
ries of acts, which, for wickedness in their nature and 
for mischief in their consequences, are absolutely with- 
out any thing approaching to a parallel in the annals of 
human infamy. Being a fellow of a college at Cam- 
bridge, and having, of course, made an engagement, (as 
the fellows do to this day,) not to marry while he was 
a fellow, he married secretly, and still enjoyed his fel- 
lowship. While a married man, he became a priest, 
and took the oath of celibacy ; and, going to Germany, 
be married another wife, the daughter of a Protestant 
" saint;" so that he had now two wives at one time, 
though his oath bound him to have no wife at all. He, 
15* 



174 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

as Archbishop, enforced the law of celibacy, while he 
himself secretly kept his German frow in the palace at 
Canterbury, having-, as we have seen in paragraph 104, 
imported her in a chest. He, as ecclesiastical judge, 
divorced Henry VIII. from t hree wives, the grounds of his 
decision in two of the cases being directly the contrary 
of those which he himself had laid down when he de- 
clared the marriages to be valid; and, in the case of 
Anne Boleyn, he, as ecclesiastical judge, pronounced, 
that Anne had never been the king's icife; while, as a 
member of the House of Peers, he voted for her death, 
as having been an adultress, and, thereby, guilty of trea- 
son to her husband. As Archbishop, under Henr} r , 
(which office he entered upon with a premeditated false 
oath on his lips,) he sent men and women to the stake be- 
cause they were not Catholics, and he sent Catholics to 
the stake, because they would not acknowledge the 
King's supremacy, and thereby perjure themselves as 
he had so often done. Become openly a Protestant, in 
Edward's reign, and openly professing those very prin- 
ciples, for the professing of which he had burnt others, 
he now burnt his fellow-Protestants, because their 
grounds for protesting were different from his. As ex- 
ecutor of the will of his old master, Henry, which gave 
the crown, (after Edward,) to his daughters, Mary and 
Elizabeth, he conspired with others to rob those two 
daughters of their right, and to give the crown to Lady 
Jane, that queen of nine days, whom he, with others, 
ordered to be proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding 
his many monstrous crimes, merely to the palace at 
Lambeth, he, in requital of the queen's lenity, plotted 
with traitors in the pay of France to overset her govern- 
ment. Brought, at last, to trial and to condemnation as 
a heretic, he professed himself ready to recant. He 
was respited for six weeks, during which time, he sign- 
ed six different forms of recantation, each more ample 
than the former. He declared that the Protestant re- 
ligion was false; that the Catholic religion was the only 
true one; that he now believed in all the doctrines of 
the Catholic Church; that he had been a horrid blas- 
phemer against the sacrament; that he was unworthy 
of forgiveness; that he prayed the people, the queem 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 175 

and the Pope, to have pity on, and to pray for hie 
wretched soul; and that he had made and signed this 
declaration without fear, and without hope of favour, 
and for the discharge of his conscience, and as a warn- 
ing to others. It was a question in the queen's council, 
whether he should be pardoned, as other recanters had 
been; but it was resolved, that his crimes were so enor- 
mous that it would be unjust to let him escape; to 
which might have been added, that it could have done 
the Catholic Church no honour to see reconciled to it 
a wretch covered with robberies, perjuries, treasons, 
and bloodshed. Brought, therefore, to the public read- 
ing of his recantation, on his way to the stake; seeing 
the pile ready ; now finding that he must die, and car- 
rying in his breast all his malignity undiminished, he 
recanted his recantation, thrust into the fire, the hand that 
had signed it, and thus expired, protesting against that 
very religion in which, only nine hours before, he had 
called God to witness that he firmly believed ! 

252. And Mary is to be called "the Bloody," be- 
cause she put to death monsters of iniquity like this ! It 
is, surely, time to do justice to the memory of this ca- 
lumniated queen; and not to do it by halves, I must, con- 
trary to my intention, employ part of the next Number 
In giving the remainder of her history, 



176 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

LETTER IX. 

Mary at War with France. 

The Capture op Calais by the French 

The Death of Queen Mary. 

Accession of Queen Elizabeth. 

Her cruel and bloody Laws relative to Re- 
ligion. 

Her Perfidy with regard to France. 

The Disgrace she brought upon her Government 
and the Country by this Perpidy. 

Her base and perpetual Surrender of Calais. 



Kensington, Slst July, 1825. 
My Friends, 

253. I now, before I proceed, to the " Reformation" 
works in the reign of Elizabeth, must conclude the 
reign of Mary. " Few and full of sorrow" were the 
days of her power. She had innumerable difficulties to 
struggle with, a most inveterate and wicked faction con- 
tinually plotting against her, and the state of her health, 
owing partly to her weak frame, and partly to the anxie- 
ties of her whole life, rendered her life so uncertain, 
that the unprincipled plunderers, though they had again 
become Catholics, were continually casting an eye to- 
wards her successor, who, though she was now a Catho- 
lic, was pretty sure to become Protestant whenever she 
came to the throne, because it was impossible that the 
Pope should ever acknowledge her legitimacy. 

254. In the year 1557, the queen was at war with 
France, on account of the endeavours of that Court to 
excite rebellion against her in England. Her husband, 
Philip, whose father, the Emperor, had now retired to 
a convent, leaving his son to supply his place, and pos- 
sess all his dominions, was also at war with France, the 
scene of which war was the Netherlands and the North 
of France. An English army had joined Philip, who 
penetrated into France, and gained a great and import- 
ant victory over the French. But a French army, un- 
der the Duke of Guiss, took advantage of the naked 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. ITT 

state of Calais to possess itself of that important town, 
which had been in possession of the English for morj 
than two hundred years. It was not Calais alone that 
England held; but the whole country round for many 
miles, including Guisnesse, Fanim, Ardres, and other 
places, together with the whole territory, called the 
county of Oye. Edward III. had taken Calais after a 
seige of nearly a year. It had always been regarded 
as Very valuable for the purposes of trade; it was 
deemed a great monument of glory to England, and it was 
a thorn continually rankling in the side of France. Dr. 
Heylin tells us, that Monsieur de Cordus, a nobleman 
who lived in the reign of Louis XL, used to say, " that 
" he would be content to lie seven years in hell upon 
" condition that this town were regained from the 
f English." 

255. The queen felt this blow most severely. It 
hastened that death which overtook her a few months 
afterwards; and, when her end approached, she told 
her attendants, that, " if they opened her body, they 
would find Calais at the bottom of her heart." This 
great misfortune was owing to the neglect, if not perfidy, 
of her councillors, joined to the dread of Philip to see 
Calais and its dependencies in the hands of Mary's suc- 
cessor. Doctor Heylin, (a Protestant, mind,) tells us, 
that Philip " seeing that danger might arise to Calais^ 
u advised the queen of it, and freely offered his assist- 
u ance for the defence of it; but, that the English Conn-. 
" cil, over-wisely jealous of Philip, neglected both his 
" advice and proffer." They left the place with only 
five hundred men in it ; and that they did this intention- 
ally it is hardly possible to doubt. Still, however, if 
the queen had lived but a little longer, Calais would 
have been restored. The war was not yet over. In 
1558 Philip and the King of France began negotiations 
for peace, and one of the conditions of Philip, (who 
was the most powerful, and who had beaten the French,) 
was, that Calais should berestored to England; and this 
condition would unquestionably have been adhered to 
by Philip; but, in the midst of these negotiations, Mary 
died I 

256. Thus, then, it is to the " Reformation," which 
Jiad caused the loss of Boulogne, in the plundering* 



178 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

and cowardly reign of Edward VI. that we, even to 
this day, owe, that we have to lament, the loss of Ca- 
lais, which was, at last, irretrievably lost by the self- 
ishness and perfidy of Elizabeth. While all histo- 
rians agree, that the loss of Calais preyed most se- 
verely upon the queen, and hastened her death; while 
they all do this great honour to her memory, none of 
them attempt to say, that the loss of Boulogne had 
even the smallest effect on the spirits of her " Reform- 
ation" brother! He was too busy in pulling down al- 
tars and in confiscating the property of Guilds and 
Fraternities to think much about national honour; or, 
perhaps, though he, while he was pulling down altars, 
still called himself " Defender of the Faith," he might 
think, that territory and glory, won by Catholics, ought 
not to be retained by Protestants. Be this as it may, 
we have seen a loss to England much greater than that 
of Calais; we have seen the half of a continent cut off 
from the crown of England, and seen it become a most 
formidable rival on the seas; and we have never heard, 
that it preyed much upon the spirits of the sovereign, 
in whose reign the loss took place. 

257. With the loss of Calais at the bottom of her 
heart, and with a well-grounded fear, that her successor 
would undo, as to religion, all that she had done, the 
unfortunate Mary expired on the 17th of November 
1558, in the forty-second year of her age, and in the 
sixth year of her reign, leaving to her sister and suc- 
cessor the example of fidelity, sincerity, patience, re- 
signation, generosity, gratitude and purity in thought, 
word and deed; an example, however, which, in every 
particular, that sister and successor took special care 
not to follow. As to those punishments, which have 
served as the ground for all the abuse heaped on the 
memory of this queen, what were they other than pun- 
ishments inflicted on offenders against the religion of 
the country? The " fires of Smithfield" have a horrid 
sound; but, to say nothing about the burnings of Ed- 
ward VI., Elizabeth, and James I., is it more pleasant 
to have, one's bowels ripped out, while the body is alive, 
(as was Elizabeth's favourite way,) than to be burnt? 
Protestants have even exceeded Catholics in the work 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 179 

of punishing offenders of this sort. And, they have 
punished, too, with less reason on their side. The 
Catholics have one faith ; the Protestants have fifty 
faiths ; and yet, each sect, whenever it gets uppermost, 
punishes, in some way or other, the rest as offenders. 
Even at this very time there are, according to a return, 
recently laid before the House of Commons, no less 
than fifty-seven persons, who have, within a fe.w years, 
suffered imprisonment and other punishments added to 
it, as offenders against religion; and this, too, at a time, 
when men are permitted openly to deny the divinity of 
Christ, and others openly to preach in their syna- 
gogues, that there never was any Christ at all A. man 
sees the law tolerate twenty sorts of Christians, (as 
they call themselves,) each condemning all the rest to 
eternal flames; and if, in consequence of this, he be 
led to express his belief, that they are all wrong, and 
that the thing they are disputing about is altogether 
something unreal, he may be punished with six years 7 
(or his whole life,) of imprisonment in a loathsome 
jail ! Let us think of these things, when we are talk- 
ing of the " bloody queen Mary." The punishments 
now-a-days proceed from the maxim that " Christi- 
anity is part and parcel of the law of the land? When 
did it begin? Before, or since, the "Reformation?" 
And, who, amongst all those sects, w r hich, it would 
seem, this law tolerates; which of them is to tell us; 
from which of them are we to learn, what Christian- 
ity is ? 

258. As to the mass of suffering, supposing the 
whole of the 277 persons, who suffered in the reign of 
Mary, to have suffered solely for the sake of religion, 
instead of having been, like Cranmer and Ridley, 
traitors and felons as well as offenders on the score of 
religion; let us suppose the whole 277 to have suffered 
for offences against religion, did the mass of suffering 
surpass the mass of suffering, on this same account, du- 
ring the reign of the late King? And, unless Smithfield 
and burning have any peculiar agony, any thing worse 
than death to impart, did Smithfield ever witness so 
great a mass of suffering as the Old Bailey has wit- 
nessed, on account of offences against that purely Pro- 



1 80 TROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

testant invention, bank notes? Perhaps this invention, 
expressly intended to keep out Popery, has' cost ten 
times, if not ten times ten times, the blood that was 
shed in the reign of her, whom we still have the in- 
justice, or the folly, to calf the "bloody queen Mary,'* 
all whose excellent qualities, all whose exalted virtues, 
all her piety, charity, generosity, sacred adherence to 
her faith and her word, all her gratitude, and even 
those feelings of anxiety for the greatness and honour 
of England, which feelings hastened her to the grave: 
all these, in which she was never equalled by any sove- 
reign that sat on the English throne, Alfred alone ex- 
cepted, whose religion she sought to re-establish for 
ever: all these are to pass for nothing, and we are to 
call her the " bloody Mary," because it suits the views 
of those who fatten on the spoils of that Church whioh 
never suffered Englishmen to bear the odious and de- 
basing name of pauper. 

ELIZABETH. 

259. To the pauper and ripping-up reign we now 
come. This is the reign of "good queen Bess." We 
shall, in a short time, see how good she was. The Act 
of Parliament, which is still in force, relative to the 
poor and poor-rates, was passed in the 43d year of this 
reign; but, that was not the only act of the kind: there 
were eleven acts passed before that, in consequence of 
the poverty and misery into which the " Reformation" 
had plunged the people. However, it is the last num- 
ber of my work, which is to contain the history of the 
rise and progress of English pauperism, from the be- 
ginning of the " Reformation' 5 down to the present time. 
At present I have to relate what took place with re- 
gard to the affairs of religion. 

260. Elizabeth, during the reign of her brother 
had been a Protestant, and during the reign of her sis- 
ter, a Catholic. At the time of her sister's death, she 
not only went to mass publicly, but she had a Catholic 
chapel in her house, and also a confessor. These ap- 
pearances had not, however, deceived her sister, who, 
to the very last, doubted her sincerity. On her death 
bed, honest and sincere Mary required from her a frank 



PROTESTAST REFORMATION. lSl 

avowal of her opinions a? to religion. Elizabeth, in 
-answer, prayed God that the earth might open and swal- 
low her, if she were not a true Roman Catholic. She 
made the same declaration to the Duke of Feria, the 
Spanish envoy, whom she so completely deceived, that 
he wrote to Philip, that the accession of Elizabeth would 
make no alteration in matters of religion in England. 
In spite of ail this, it was not long before she began rip- 
ping up the bowels of her unhappy subjects, because 
they were Roman Catholics. 

261. She was a bastard by law. The marriage of her 
mother had been, by law, which yet remained unrepeal- 
ed, declared to be null and void from the beginning. — 
Her accession having been, in the usual way, notified 
to foreign powers, that is, that " she had succeeded to f 
the throne by hereditary right and the consent of the na- # 
tion." the Pope answered, that he did not understand the 
hereditary right of a person not born in lawful wedlock. 
So that /ie, of course, could not acknowledge her here- 
ditary right. This was of itself, a pretty strong in- 
ducement for a lady of so flexible a conscience as she 
had, to resolve to be a Protestant. But, there was ano- 
ther and even a stronger motive. Mary, Queen of Scot- 
land, who had married the Dauphin of France, claimed 
the crown of England, as the nearest legitimate des- 
cendant of Henry VII. , So that Elizabeth ran a mani- 
fest risk of losing the crown, unless she became a Pro- 
iestant, and crammed Cranmer's creed down the throats 
of her people. If she remained a Catholic, she must 
yield submission to the decrees from Rome : the Pope 
could have made it a duty with her people to abandon 
her, or, at the very least, he could have greatly em- 
barrassed her. In short, she saw clearly, that, if her 
people remained Catholics, she could never reign in per- 
fect safety. She knew that she had no hereditary 
right; she knew that the law ascribed her birth to 
adultery. She never could think of reigning quietly 
over a people the head of whose Church refused to ac- 
knowledge her right to the crown. And, resolving to 
wear that crown, she resolved, cost what ruin or blood 
it might, to compel her people to abandon that very reli- 
gion, her belief in which she had, a few months before, 
16 



182 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

declared, by praying to " God that the earth might 
open and swallow her alive, if she were not a true Ro- 
man Catholic. 

262. The Pope's answer was honest; but it was im- 
politic, and most unfortunate it was for the English and 
Irish people, who had now to prepare for sufferings 
such as they had never known before. The situation 
of things was extremely favourable to the Protestants. 
Mary, the Queen of Scots, the real and lawful heir to 
the throne, was, as we have seen, married to the Dau- 
phin of France. If Elizabeth were set aside, or, if 
she died without issue before Mary, England must be- 
come an appendage of France. The loss of Calais 
and Boulogne had mortified the nation enough; but, for 
England herself to be transferred to France, was what 

#10 Englishman could think of with patience. So that 
she became strong from the dread that the people had 
of the consequences of her being put down. It was 
the betrothing of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dau- 
phin, which induced Mary, Queen of England, to marry 
Philip, and thereby to secure an ally for England, in 
case of Scotland becoming a dependance of France. 
How much more pressing was the danger now, when 
the queen of Scots was actually married to the Dauphin, 
(the heir apparent to the French throne,) and when, if 
she were permitted to possess the crown of England, 
England, in case of her having a son, must become a 
province of France! 

263. This state of things was, therefore, most un- 
fortunate for the Catholics. It made many, very many, 
of themselves cool in opposition to the change which 
the new Queen soon showed her determination to effect; 
for, however faithful as to their religion, they were Eng- 
lishmen, and abhorred the thought of being the under- 
lings of Frenchmen. They might hate the queen for 
her apostacy and tyranny; but still they could not but 
desire that England should remain an independent state; 
and to keep her such, the upholding of Elizabeth seem- 
ed absolutely necessary. Those who eulogize Henry 
IV. of France, who became a Catholic expressly and 
avowedly for the purpose of possessing and keeping 
the throne of that country, cannot very consistently 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 183 

blame Elizabeth for becoming a Protestant for an ex- 
actly similar reason. I do not attempt to justify either 
of them; but I must confess, that, if any thing would 
have induced me to uphold Elizabeth, it would have 
been, that she, as far as human foresight could go, was 
an instrument necessary to preserve England from sub- 
jection to France; and, beyond all doubt, this was the 
main reason for which, at the outset at least, she was 
upheld by many of the eminent and powerful men of 
that day. 

264. But if we admit that she w^as justified in thus 
cousulting her preservation as a Queen, and the nation's 
independence, at the expense of religious considera- 
tions; if we admit that she had a right to give a prefer- 
ence to Protestants, and to use all gentle means for the 
totally changing of the religion of her people; if we 
admit this, and that is admitting a great deal more than 
justice demands from us, who can refrain from being fill- 
ed with horror at the barbarity which she so unsparing- 
ly exercised for the accomplishment of her purpose? 

265. The intention to change the religion of the coun- 
try became, in a short time, so manifest, that all the 
Bishops but one refused to crown her. She, at last, 
found one to do it; but even he would not consent to 
do the thing without her conformity to the Catholic 
ritual. Very soon, however, a series of acts were 
passed, which, by degrees, put down the Catholic wor- 
ship, and re-introduced the Protestant; and she found 
the plunderers and possessors of plunder just as ready 
to conform to her ecclesiastical sway, as they had been 
to receive absolution from Cardinal Pole, in the last 
reign. Cranmer's book of Common Prayer, which 
had been ascribed by the Parliament to the suggestions 
of the "Holy Ghost^ had been altered and amended 
even in Edward's reign. It was now revived, and al- 
tered and amended again; and still it was ascribed to 
the " dictates of the Holy Ghost /" 

266. If these Acts of Parliament had stopped here, 
they would certainly have been bad and disgraceful 
enough. But such a change was not to be effected with- 
out blood. This Queen was resolved to reign: the blood 
of her people she deemed necessary to her own safety;. 



184 PROTESTANT REFORMATION". 

and she never scrupled to make it flow. She looked 
upon the Catholic religion as her mortal enemy; and, 
cost what it might, she was resolved to destroy it, if 
she could, the means being, by her, those which best an- 
swered her end. 

267. With this view, statutes the most bloody were 
passed. All persons were compelled to take the oath 
of supremacy, on pain of death. To take the oath of 
supremacy; that is to say, to acknowledge the Queen's 
supremacy in spiritual matters, was to renounce the 
Pope and the Catholic religion; or, in other words, to 
become an apostate. Thus was a very large part of her 
people at once condemned to death for adhering to the 
religion of their fathers; and, moreover, for adhering 
to that very religion, in which she had openly lived till 
she became queen, and to her firm belief in which she 
dad sworn at her coronation ! 

288. Besides this act of monstrous barbarity, it was 
made high treason in a priest to say mass ; it was made 
high treason in a priest to come into the kingdom from 
abroad; it was made high treason to harbour or to relieve, 
a priest. And, on these grounds, and others of a like 
nature, hundreds upon hundreds were butchered in the 
most inhuman manner, being first hung up, then cut 
down alive, their bowels then ripped up, and their 
bodies chopped into quarters: and this, I again beg you, 
sensible and just Englishmen, to observe, only because 
the unfortunate persons were too virtuous and sincere 
to apostatize from that faith which this queen herself 
had, at her coronation, in her coronation path, solemnly 
sworn to adhere To and defend! 

269. Having pulled down the altars, set up the ta- 
bles; having ousted the Catholic priests and worship, 
and put in their stead a set of hungry, beggarly crea- 
tures, the very scum oi the earth, with CranmerV 
prayer-book amended in their hands; having done this, 
she compelled her Catholic subjects to attend in tlw 
churches under enormous penalties, which rose, at last, 
to death itself incase of perseverance in refusal! Thus 
were all the good, all the sincere, all the conscientious 
people in the kingdom incessantly harrassed, ruined by 
enormous fines, brought to the gallows, or compelled to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 185 

flee from their native country. Thus was this Protest- 
ing religion watered with the tears and the blood of 
.he people of England. Talk of Catholic persecution 
md cruelty ! Where are you to find persecution and 
cruelty like this, inflicted by Catholic princes? Eliza- 
beth put, in one way or another, more Catholics to 
death, in one year, for not becoming apostates to the re- 
ligion which she had sworn to be her's, and to be the 
•only true one, than Mary put to death in her whole 
Teign for having apostatized from the' religion of her 
and their fathers, and to which religion she herself had 
always adhered. Yet, the former is called, or has 
been called, " good Queen Bess," and the latter " bloody 
Queen Mary." Even the horrid massacre of St. 
Bartholomew was nothing, when fairly compared with 
the butcheries and other cruelties of the reign of this 
Protestant Queen of England; yes, a mere nothing; and 
yet she put on mourning upon that occasion, and had 
the consummate hypocrisy to affect horror at the cruel- 
ties that the king of France had committed. 

270. This massacre took place at Paris, in the year 
1572j and in the 14th year of Elizabeth's reign; and, as 
it belongs to the history of that day, as it was, in fact, 
in part, produced by her own incessant and most mis- 
chievous intrigues, and, as it has been made a great han- 
dle of in the work of calumniating the Catholics, even 
to this day, it is necessary that I give a true account of 
it, and that I go back to those civil wars in France 
which she occasioned, and in which she took so large a 
part, and which finally lost Calais and its territory to 
England. The "Reformation," which Luther said he 
was taught by the Devil, had found its way into France 
so early as in the year 1530, or thereabouts. The " re- 
formers" there were called Huguenots. For a long 
while they were of little consequence; but they, at last, 
in the reign of Charles IX., became formidable to the 
government by being taken hold of by those ambitious 
and rebellious leaders Conde and Coligni. The fac- 
tion, of which these two were the chiefs, wanted to 
have the governing of France during the minority of 
Charles, who came to the throne in the year 1561, at 
ten years of age. His mother, the Queen Dowager, 
16* 



136 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

gave the preference to the Duke of Guise and his party. 
The disappointed nobles, Conde and Coligni, needed no 
better motive for becoming- most zealous Protestants, 
the Guises being zealous in the Catholic cause ! Hence 
arose an open rebellion on the part of the former,/o- 
mented by the Queen of England, who seemed to think, 
that she never could be safe as long as there were Ca- 
tholic prince, priest, or people left upon the face of the 
earth; and who never stuck at means if they were but 
calculated to effect her end. She was herself an apos- 
tate ; she wanted to annihilate that from which she had 
apostatized; and, by her endeavors to effect her purpose, 
she made her own people bleed at every pore, and made no 
scruple, upon any occasion, to sacrifice the national honor. 
271. At her coming to the throne, she found the coun- 
try at war with France, and Calais in its hands, that 
fortressand territory having, as we have seen in para- 
graph 254, been taken by a French army under the 
Duke of Guise. She almost immediately made peace 
with France, and that, too, without getting Calais back r 
as she might have done, if she had not preferred her 
own private interest to the interest and honour of Eng- 
land. The negotiations for peace, (England, Spain and 
France being the parties,) were carried on at Cateau- 
Cambresis, in France. All was soon settled with regard 
to Spain and France; but Philip, (Mary's husband, re- 
member,) faithful to his engagements, refused to sign the 
treaty, until the new Queen of England should be satis- 
fied with regard to Calais ; and he even offered to conti- 
nue the war for six years, unless Calais were restored^ 
provided Elizabeth would bind herself not to make a 
separate peace during that period. She declined this 
generous offer; she had begun to rip up her subjects, 
and was afraid of war; and she, therefore, clandestine- 
ly entered into negotiations with France, and it was 
agreed that the latter should keep Calais for eight years, 
or pay to England 500,000 crowns ! Never was there 
a baser act than this treaty, on the part of England. But 
this was not all; for the treaty further stipulated, that if 
France committed any act of aggression against England 
during the eight years, or if England committed any 
^aet of aggression against France,, during that time, the 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 1ST 

treaty should be void, and that the former should lose 
the right of retaining, and the latter the claim to thz res- 
toration, of this valuable town and territory. 

272. This treaty was concluded in 1559, and it was a 
treaty not only of friendship but of allianee between the 
parties. But, before three years out of the eight had 
passed away, " good queen Bess," out of pure hatred and 
fear of the Catholics; from a pure desire to make her 
tyrannical sway secure; from the sole desire of being 
still able to fine, imprison, and rip up her unfortunate 
subjects, forfeited all claim to the restoration of Calais, 
and that, too, by a breach of treaty more flagrant and 
more base than, perhaps, had ever been witnessed in the 
world. 

273. Conde and Coligni, with their Huguenots, 
had stirred up a formidable civil war in France " Good 
queen Bess's" ambassador at that Court stimulated and 
assisted the rebels to the utmost of his power, At last, 
Vidame, an agent of Conde and Coligni, came, secretly^ 
over to England to negotiate for military, naval, and pe- 
cuniary assistance. They succeeded with u gpod Bess," 
who, wholly disregarding the solemn treaties by 
which she was Hound to Charles IX., King of France, 
entered into a formal treaty with the Frenci rebels to 
send them an army and money, for the purpose of car- 
rying on war against their sovereign, of wiom she was 
an ally, having bound herself, in that character, by a so- 
lemn oath on the Evangelists ! By this treaty she engag- 
ed to furnish men, ships, and money; and tie traitors on 
their part, engaged to put Havre de Grase at once in- 
to her hands, as a pledge, not only for therepayment of 
the money to be advanced, but for the restoration of Ca- 
lais! This infamous compact richly deserved the con- 
sequences that attended it. 

274. The French ambassador in London, when he 
found that an intercourse was going on between the 
queen and the agents of the rebels, went to Cecil, the 
secretary of state, carrying the treaty of Cateau Cam- 
bresis in his hand, and demanded, agreeably to the sti- 
pulations of that treaty, that the agents of the rebels 
should be delivered upas traitors to their sovereign; and 
he warned the English government that any act of aggres- 



188 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 



sion o|n its part, would annihilate its claim to the recove- 
ry of Calais at the end of the eight years. But "good 
Bess'^had caused the civil war in France; she had, by 
her bribes, and other underhand means stirred them up, 
and sh^, believed that the successes of the French rebels 
were ^ecessary to her own security on her throne of 
doubtfiil right; and as she hoped to get Calais in this 
perfidious way, she saw nothing but gain in the perfidy. 

275. 'The rebels were in possession of Dieppe, Rou- 
en, Havre de Grace, and had extended their power 
over a considerable part of Normandy. They at once 
put Havre and Dieppe into the hands of the English. 
So infamous and treacherous a proceeding roused the 
Catholics of France, who now became ashamed of that 
inactivity j which had suffered a sect, less than a hun- 
dredth part of the population, to sell their country un- 
der the blasphemous plea of a love of the Gospel. — 
n Good Bejss," with her usual mixture of hypocrisy and 
effrontry, sent her proclamation into Normandy, declar- 
ing, that she meant wo hostility against her "good&ro- 
ther" the King of France; but merely to protect his 
Protestant subjects against the tyranny of the House of 
Guise ; andUhat her "good brother" ought to be grate- 
ful to her for the assistance she was lending! This cool 
and hypocritical insolence added fury to the flame. All 
France coul^ but recollect, that it was the skilful, the 
gallant, the 'patriotic Duke of Guise, who had, only 
five years before, ejected the English from Calais, their 
last hold in IVance; and they now saw these " sons of 
the Gospel, 5 "* as they had the audacity to call themselves, 
bring those Same English back again, and put two 
French seaports into their hands at once! Are we to 
wonder at the inextinguishable hatred of the people of 
France against this traitorous sect? Are we to won- 
der, that they felt a desire to extirpate the whole of so 
infamous a race, who had already sold their country to 
the utmost of their power? 

276. The French nobility, from every province and 
corner of France, flew to the aid of their sovereign, 
whose army was commanded by the Constable, Mont- 
morency, with the Duke of Guise under him. Conde 
was at the head of the rebel army, having Coligni as a 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 18$ 

s*ort of partner in the concern, and having been joined 
by the English troops, under the Earl of Warwick, 
nephew of " good Bess's" paramour, Dudley, of whom 
the Protestant clergymen, Heylin and Whitaker, will 
tell us more than enough by-and-by. The first move- 
ment of the French against this combined mass of hy- 
pocrisy, audacity, perfidy and treason, was the be- 
sieging of Rouen, into w T hich Sir Edward Pomings, 
who had preceded Warwick, had thrown an English 
reinforcement to assist the faithful " sons of the Gos- 
pel." In order to encourage the French, the Queen- 
Mother, (Catherine de Medici,) her son the young 
King, Charles, (now twelve years of age,) and the 
King of Navarre, were present at the siege. The 
latter was mortally wounded in the attack; but, the 
Catholics finally took the town by assault, and put the 
whole of the garrison to the sword, including the English 
reinforcement sent by " good Queen Bess." 

277. In the meanwhile the brother of Coligni had, 
by the money of "good Bess," collected together a 
body of German mercenary Gospellers, and had got 
them to Orleans, which was then the main hold of the 
Huguenots; -while u good Bess," in order to act her 
part faithfully, ordered public prayers, during three 
whole days, to implore God's blessing " upon her cause 
and the cause of the Gospel." Thus reinforced by 
another body of foreigners brought into tbeir country, 
the base traitors, Conde and Coligni, first made a feint 
on the side of Paris; but, finding themselves too weak 
on that side, they took their way towards Normandy, 
in the hope of their having the aid of the English 
forces. But, the Catholics, still under Montmorency 
and the Duke of Guise, followed the traitors, overtook 
them at Dreux, compelled them to fight, took Conde 
himself prisoner, and, though Montmorency was taken 
prisoner by the rebels, the Duke of Guise took the 
chief command, and drove the rebel Coligni and his 
army before him; and, this, too, observe, in spite of 
" good Bess's" three whole days of prayers. 

278. Nevertheless, Coligni kept the field and pil- 
laged Normandy pretty severely. " Good Bess" sent 
iiim some money, and offered to be bound for more, it" 



190 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

lie could get any merchants, (that is, Jews,) to lend it 
him; but she sent him no troops ; those, under the Earl 
of Warwick, being kept safe and sound in the strong 
fortress of Havre de Grace, which place honest and 
*' good Bess" intended to keep, let things go which way 
they might, which honest, intention we shall, however, 
find defeated in the end. Coligni and his ruffians and 
German mercenary Gospellers cruelly plundered the 
Normans as far as they could extend their arms. The 
Catholics, now under the Duke of Guise, laid siege to 
Orleans. While this siege was going on, one Poltrot, 
a Huguenot, in tlie pay of Coligni, went under the 
guise of being a deserter from that inveterate rebel 
chief, and entered into the service of the army under 
the Duke of Guise. In a short time this miscreant 
found the means to assassinate that gallant nobleman 
and distinguished patriot, instigated, and, indeed, em- 
ployed for the express purpose by Coligni, -and urged 
on by Beza, the "famous preacher" as Hume calls 
him, but really one of the most infamous of all the " re- 
forming" preachers, and, perhaps, second to none but 
Luther himself. This atrocious deed met, after- 
wards, with retaliation in the massacre of St. Barthol- 
omew, when on Coligni's mangled body there might 
have been placarded the name of Poltrot. This 
wretch had been paid by Coligni, and the money had 
come from honest and sincere " good Queen. Bess," 
whom we shall hereafter, find plainly accused by Whit- 
aker, (a clergyman of the Church of England,) of plot- 
ting the assassination of her own cousin, and finding no 
man in her kingdom base enough to perform the deed. 
279. This foul deed seems to have made Conde 
ashamed of his infamous associate and followers. Am- 
bition had made him a rebel; but he had sense of ho- 
nour enough left to make him shudder at the thought 
of being the leader of assassins; and he, with one drop 
of true blood in him, could not think without horror of 
such, a man as the Duke of Guise who had rendered 
such inestimable services to France, being swept from 
existence by so base a miscreant as that whom his late 
colleague had hired and paid for that purpose. If the 
son of the Duke of Guise could have destroyed Coligm 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 1§1 

and his whole crew, he would have been justified in so 
doing. And yet, the world has been stunned with the 
Protestant cries of horror at the death of this same 
Coligni and a small part of his followers! 

280. Conde now sought to get rid of his miscreant 
associates, by proposing, in February 1563, a pacifica- 
tion, and tendering his submission to his sovereign on 
condition of an act of oblivion. Coligni was included 
in the amnesty. The king granted to the Huguenots 
permission to practice their worship in one town in 
every bailiwick; and thus were all matters settled be- 
tween the king and his rebellious subjects. Sad tidings 
for "good Queen Bess," who, as Whitaker well ob- 
serves, continually sought her safety in the divisions 
and misery of others. Conde, in his treaty with her, 
had stipulated not to conclude any 'peace without her 
consent ; but had she a right to complain of a want of 
good faith ? She, who had broken her treaty and her 
oath with Charles IX., and who, in defiance of both, 
had entered iuto a treaty with rebels, in open arms 
against their king? 

281. The French king, wishing to get her troops qui- 
etly out of Havre de Grace, and finding that she now 
pretended to hold it as a pledge for the surrender of Ca- 
lais, at the end of the eight years offered to renew the 
treaty of Cateau Cambresis, by which Calais was to be 
restored to England in 1567. But, she rejected this fair 
and reasonable proposal. She had got Havre; no mat- 
ter how; and she said; that " a bird in hand was worth 
two in the bush," snapping her fingers at the same time, 
and, as was the common practice with her on such occa- 
sions, confirming her resolution with a thundering oath 9 
so becoming in a " Virgin queen." Finding, however, 
that all parties in France were now united for the ex- 
pulsion of the English, she reluctantly gave way. She 
authorised her ambassadors to present a new project of 
treaty; but, by this time, the French army, under Mont- 
morency, Conde, " Good Bess's" late friend and ally be- 
ing serving in the army, was on its way to regain Havre 
by force of arms, the king of France being well con- 
vinced, that treaties with " Good Betsy" were things 
perfectly vain. 



192 PROTESTANT REFORM ATI©N, 

282. Still, it was not a trifling thing to take Havre 
©ut of the hands of the English. A great deal of taxes 
had been imposed upon this nation, (to say nothing of 
the " prayers") in order to insure the possession of this 
place. The Earl of Warwick, instead of sending 
troops to assist Bess's allies, had kept his army at Ha- 
vre; had, with six thousand soldiers and seven hundred 
pioneers, rendered the place "impregnable;" had, as 
soon as he heard that the rebellion was at an end, ex- 
pelled all the French peopk from Havre, to their utter 
ruin, and in direct breach of Bess's treaty with Conde 
and Coligni. But, in spite of all this, Montmorency was 
at the end of a short time, ready to enter the place by 
assault, having made his breaches in preparation. The 
Queen-mother, and the King were present in the camp, 
where they had the indescribable pleasure to see 
" Good Queen Bess's general humbly propose to surren- 
der the place to its rightful sovereign, without any men- 
tion of Calais and territory, and on no condition what- 
ever, but that of being permitted to return to England 
with the miserable remnant of his army; and England, 
after all the treasure and blood, expended to gratify the 
malignity of " Good Bess,'' and after all the just impu- 
tations of perfidy that she had brought upon it, had to 
receive that remnant, that ratification of disgrace, great- 
er than it had to support from the day when glorious 
Alfred finally expelled the Danes. And, yet, this wo- 
man is called, or has been called u Good Queen Bess," 
and her perfidious and butchering reign has been called 
glorious ! 

283. Great as the mortifications of " Good Bess' 9 
now were, and great as were the misfortunes of the 
country, brought upon it by these her proceedings of 
hitherto unheard of hypocrisy and breach of faith, we 
have, as yet seen the full measure of neither the one nor 
the other. For, " glorious and good Bess" had now to 
sue for peace, and with that King, w T ith w r hose rebel 
subjects she had so recently co-operated. Her ambas- 
sadors, going with due passports, were arrested and im- 
prisoned. She stamped and swore, but she swallowed 
the affront, and took the regular steps to cause them to 
be received at the French court, who, on their part., 



I-ROTESTANT REFORMATION. 1$3 

created her pressing applications with a contemptuous 
sneer, and suffered, many months to pass away, before 
they would listen to any terms of peace. Smith was 
one of her envoys, knd the other was that same Throck- 
morton, who had been her ambassador at Paris, and 
who had been her agent in stirring up Conde and Colig- 
ni to their rebellion, The former was imprisoned at 
Melun, and thelatter at St. Germain's. Smith was 
released upon her application; but Throckmorton was 
detained, and was made use of for the following curious, 
and, to " Good Bess," most humiliating purpose. The 
treaty of Cate^u Cambresis, which stipulated for the 
restoration of Calais in eight years, or the forfeiture of 
500,000 crowis by the French, contained a stipulation 
that four Freach noblemen should be held by " good 
Bess," as hosiiges for the fulfilment of the treaty on the 
part of France. " Good Bess," by her aiding of the 
French rebel^ had broken this treaty, had lost all just 
claim to Cala[s> and ought to have released the hostages; 
but, as " good Bess" very seldom did what she ought to; 
as she migKt, almost every day of her mischievous life, 
bave with perfect truth, repeated that part of the Pray- 
er-Book r amended? 1 which says, " we have done those 
things tfhich we ought not to do, and have left undone 
those tags which we ought to do;" so, this " good" 
woman had kept the hostages, though she had forfeited 
all just claim to that, for the fulfilment of which they 
had been put into, her hands. Now, however, the 
French had got a " bird in hand" too. They had got 
Throckmorton, their old enemy, and he had got a large 
quantity of " good" Bess's horrible secrets locked up in his 
breast ! So that, after long discussions, during which 
Throckmorton gave very significant signs of his deter- 
mination not to end his days in prison without taking re- 
venge of some sort on his merciless employer, the "good" 
woman agreed to exchange the four French noblemen 
for him; and, as a quarter of a loaf was better than 
no bread, to take 125,000 crowns for the relinquishment 
of Calais to France in perpetuity /" 

284. Thus, then, it was, " good Queen Bess," after 
all, glorious and Protestant Bess, that plucked this jewel 
•from the English crown ! nor was this the only signal 
17 



194 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

consequence of her unhallowed and unprincipled treaty 
and intrigues with the French rebels. The plague, 
.which had got into the garrison of Havre de Grace and 
which had left Warwick with only about two thousand 
out of his seven thousand men- this dreadful disease was 
brought by that miserable remnant of infected beings, 
to England, where Hume himself allows, that it "swept 
" off great multikides, especially in London, where a- 
" above twenty thousand died of it in one year P\ Thus 
was the nation heavily taxed, afflicted with war, afflict- 
ed with pestilence; thus were thousands upon thousands 
of English people destroyed, or ruined, or rendered 
miserable, merely to gratify this proud and malignant 
woman, who thought that she could nerer be safe until 
all the world joined in her flagrant apostacy. Thus, 
and merely for this same reason, was Calais surrender- 
ed for ever; Calais, the proudest possession of Eng- 
land; Calais, one of the two keys of the Northern 
Seas; Calais, that had been won by our Catholic fore- 
fathers two hundred years before; Calais, which they 
would have no more thought of yielding to France, 
than they would have thought of yielding Dover; Ca- 
lais, the bare idea of a possibility of losing which had 
broken the heart of the honest, the virtuous, the patri- 
otic and most calumniated Mary ! 

284. It is surprising what baseness Hume discovers 
in treating of the whole of this important series of 
transactions; how he glosses over all the breaches of 
faith and of oath, on the part of the " good Bess;" how 
he lets pass without censure the flagrant and malignant 
treason of the rebels; and even how he insinuates apol- 
ogies for; how he skips by the rare fidelity of Philip 
to his engagements; how he praises the black-hearted 
Coligni, while he almost censures Conde for seeking 
peace after the assassination of the Duke of Guise; 
how he tvlvolly suppresses the deep humiliations of Eng- 
land in the case of Smith and Throckmorton; how he 
makes the last bill of sale 200,000, instead of the fourth 
pari of 500,000; how he passes over the loss of Ca- 
lais forever, as nothing in "good Bess," though he had 
made the temporary loss of it everything in Mary; but, 
above all the rest, how he constantly aims his maligmty 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 195 

at that skilful, brave, faithful, and patriotic nobleman, 
the Duke of Guise, while he extols Conde as long as he 
was a rebel and a traitor, engaged in selling his country; 
and how he lauds the inveterate and treacherous Co- 
ligni to the last hour of that traitor's life. 

285. Is there any man, who does not see the vast im- 
portance of Calais and its territory? Is there any man 
who does not see how desirable it would be to us to 
have it now? Is there an Englishman who does not la- 
ment the loss of it? And is it not clear as the sun at 
noonday, that it was lost for ever by " good Bess's" per- 
fidy in joining the rebels of France? If, when those 
rebels were formidable to their sovereign, she had 
pressed him to restore Calais at once, and to take an 
equivalent for such anticipated restoration, is it not ob- 
vious, that he would have consented, rather than risk 
her displeasure at such a moment? And, what is the 
apology, that Hume makes for her conduct in joining 
the rebels? " Elizabeth, besides the general and es- 
sential interest of supporting the Protestants, andop- 
" posing the rapid progress of her enemy,. the Duke of 
" Guise" (how was he her enemy?) " had other motives, 
" which engaged her to accept this proposal. When 
" she concluded the peace at Cateau Cambresis, she had 
"good reason to foresee, that France would never vol- 
u untarily fulfil the article with regard to the restitution 
" of Calais ; and many subsequent incidents tended to 
u confirm this suspicion. Considerable sums of money 
" had been laid out on the fortifications; long leases had 
"been granted of the lands; and many inhabitants had 
" been encouraged to build and settle there, by assu- 
" ranees that Calais would never he restored to the Eng- 
" lish. The queen, therefore, very icisely concluded, 
"that, could she get possession of Havre, a place 
" which commanded the mouth of the Seine, and was 
64 of much greater importance than Calais, she should 
" easily constrain the French to execute the treaty, and 
" should have the glory of restoring to the crown tha t 
" ancient possession, which was so much the favourite 
" of the nation." 

286. Away, then, goes, at once, all her professions 
of desire to defend the "cause of the Gospel;" she is 



196 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

a hypocrite the most profound at once; she breaks 
faith with the king of France and with the rebels too. 
But, if she really foresaw that the French would not 
voluntarily fulfil the treaty of Cateau Cainbresis, why 
did she conclude it, when Philip was ready to aid her 
in compelling France to restore Calais at once? And, 
as to the " subsequent incidents" which had confirmed 
her suspicions, why should not the French government 
repair the fortifications, and why should they not give 
" assurances that the territory would never he restored to 
u the English" seeing, that she had bargained for the 
perpetual surrender of 500,000 crowns? The French 
meant, doubtless, to pay the money at the end of the 
eight years. They never, after they had rejected the 
otter of Philip, intended to give up Calais: that every 
body knew, and nobody better than u good Bess:" she 
had hostages for the payment of the money, and she 
held those hostages, after she had received Havre from 
the rebels as a security for the payment of that money! 
She had, she thought, two birds in the hand; but, though 
she "concluded very wisely r," both birds escaped: she 
outwitted and overreached herseli: and the nation has, 
to this day, to lament the consequences of her selfish- 
ness, bad faith and atrocious perfidy. 

287. I should now proceed to follow " good Bess 7 ' 
and her worthy friend Coligni down to the date of the 
massacre of Saint Bartholomew, which was a sort of 
wholesale of the same work that " good Bess" carried 
on in detail: but, I have filled my paper; and, I now 
see that it will be impossible to for me do any thing like 
justice to my subject, without stretching my little work 
further than I intended. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 197 

LETTER X. 

Massacre op Saint Bartholomew. 

Tail-Piece to it. 

A Man's Hand Cut off for thwarting Bess in her 

Love sick Pit. 
Her Favourites and Ministers. 
History and Murder of Mary, Queen of Scotland, 



Kensington, 31 st August, 1825. 
My Friends, 

288. Though the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew 
took place in France, yet, it has formed so fertile a 
source of calumny against the religion of our fathers; it 
has served as a pretence with Protestant historians to 
justify, or paliate so many atrocities on the part of their 
divers sects; and the Queen of England and her Minis- 
ters had so great a hand in first producing it, and then 
in punishing Catholics under pretence of avenging it, 
that it is necessary for me to give an account of it. 

289. We have seen, in the paragraphs from 273 to 
381, the treacherous works of Coligni, and, in para- 
graph 278, we have seen that this pretended Saint base- 
ly caused that gallant and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of 
Guise, to be assassinated. But, in assassinating this nob e^ 
man, the wretch did not take off the whole of his family. 
There was a son left to avenge that father, a.id the just 
vengeance of this son the treacherous Coligni had yet to 
feel. We have seen, that peace had taken place be- 
tween the French king and his rebellious subjects; but, 
Coligni had all along discovered that his treacherous 
designs only slept. The king was making a progress 
through the kingdom about four years after the pacifica- 
tion; a plot was formed by Coligni and his associates to 
kill or seize him; but, by riding fourteen hours, with- 
out getting off his horse, and without food or drink, he 
escaped, and got safe to Paris. Another civil war soon 
broke out, followed by another pacification; but, such 
had been the barbarities committed on both sides,- that 
'here could be, sad there was^no real forgiveness^ The 

IT* 



198 PROTESTANT REFORMATION*. 

Protestants had been full as sanguinary as the Catholics; 
and, which has been remarked even by their own his- 
torians, their conduct was frequently, not to say uni- 
formly, characterized by plundering and by hypocrisy 
and perfidy, unknown to their enemies. 

290. During this pacification, Coligni had, by the 
deepest dissimulation, endeavoured to worm himself in- 
to favour with the young King, and upon the occassion 
of a marriage between the King's sister and the young 
King of Navarre, (afterwards the famous Henry IV.) Co- 
ligni, who, Conde being now dead, was become the chief 
of his sect, came to Paris, with a company of his Pro- 
testant adherents, to partake in the celebration, and 
that, too, at the King's invitation. After he had been 
there a day or two, some one shot at him, in the street, 
with a blunderbuss, and wounded him in two or three; 
places, but not dangerously. His partisans ascribed 
this to the young Duke of Guise, though no proof has 
ever been produced in support of the assertion. They, 
however, got about their leader, and threatened re- 
venge, as was very natural. Taking this for the ground 
of their justification, the Court resolved to anticipate 
the blow; and, on Sunday, the 24th of August, 1572, it 
being St. Bartholomew,^ day, they put their design 
in execution. There was great difficulty in prevail- 
ing upon the young King to give his consent; but, at 
last, by the representation s and entreaties of his mother, 
those of the Duke of Anjou, his brother, and those of 
the Duke of Guise, he was prevailed upon. The dread- 
ful orders were given; at the appointed moment the sig- 
nal was made; the Duke of Guise with a band of fol- 
lowers rushed to and broke open the house of Coligni, 
whose dead body was soon thrown out of the window 
into the street. The people of Paris, who mortally hat- 
ed the Protestants, and who could not have forgotten 
Coligni's having put the English in possession of Dieppe 
and Havre; who could not have forgotten, that, while 
the old enemy of France was thus again brought into 
the country by Coligni and his Protestants, this same 
traitor and his sect had basely assassinated that brave 
nobleman, the late Duke of Guise, who had driven the 
English from their last hold 3 Calais, and who had beeu 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 19$ 

assassinated at the very moment when he was endea- 
vouring to drive this old enemy from Havre, into which 
this Cfcligni and his sect had brought that enemy: the 
people of Paris could not but remember these things, 
and remembering* them, they could not but hold C,o- 
ligni and his sect in detestation inscribable. Besides 
this, there were few of them some one or more of whose 
relations had not perished, or suffered in some way or 
other, from the plunderings, or butcheries, of these ma- 
rauding and murdering Calvanists, whose creed taught 
them, that good works were unavailing, and that no 
deeds, however base or bloody, could bar their way to 
salvation. These " Protestants," as they were called, 
bore no more resemblance to Protestants, of the pre- 
sent day, than the wasp bears a resemblance to the bee. 
That name then was, and it was justly, synonymous 
with banditti; that is, robber and murderer ; and the per- 
sons bearing it had been, by becoming the willing tool 
of every ambitious rebel, a greater scourge to France 
than foreign war, pestilence and famine united. 

291. Considering these things, and, taking into view, 
that, the people, always ready to suspect even beyond 
the limits of reason, heard the cry of " treason" on all 
sides, is it any wonder that they fell upon the followers 
of Coligni, and that they spared none of the sect that 
they were able to destroy? When we consider these 
things, and especially when we see the son of the assas- 
sinated Duke of Gui-se lead the way, is it not a most mon- 
strous violation of truth to ascribe this massacre to the 
principles of the Catholic religion? With equal justice 
might we ascribe the act of Bellingham, (who sent for 
his Church Prayer Book the moment he was lodged in 
Newgate,) to the principles of the Church of England. No 
one has ever been base and impudent enough to do this; 
why, then, are there men so base and impudent, as to 
ascribe this French massacre to Catholic principles? 

292. The massacre at Paris very far exceeded the 
washes of the court; and, orders were instantly dis- 
patched to the great towns in the provinces to prevent 
similar scenes. Such scenes, took place, however, in 
several places; but, though by some Protestant writers, 
the whole number of persons killed, has been made to 



$00 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

amount to a hundred thousand, an account, published in 
1582, and made up from accounts, collected fro,n the 
ministers in the different towns, made the number, for 
all France, amount to only 786 persons! Dr. Lingard, 
(Note T. Vol. V.) with his usual fairness, says, " if 
we double this number we shall not be far from the reaL 
amount." The Protestant writers began at 100,000; 
then fell to 70,000; then to 30,000; then to 20,000; then 
to 15,000; and, at last, to 10,000! All in round num- 
bers! One of them, in an hour of great indiscretion, 
ventured upon obtaining returns of names from the mi- 
nisters themselves; and, then, out came the 786 persons 
in the whole! 

293. A number truly horrible to think of but a num- 
ber not half so great as that of those English Catho- 
lics whom "good Queen Bess" had, even at this time, 
(the 14th year of her reign,) caused to be ripped up, 
racked till the bones came out of their sockets, or caus- 
ed to be dispatched, or to die, in prison, or in exile; and 
this, too, observe, not for rebellions, treasons, robbe- 
ries and assassinations, like those of Coligni and his 
followers; but, simply and solely for adhering to the re- 
ligion of their and her fathers, which religion she had 
openly practised for years, and to which religion she 
had most solemnly sworn that she sincerely belong- 
ed ! The annals of hypocrisy conjoined with impudence 
afford nothing to equal her behaviour upon the occasion 
of the St. Bartholomew. She was daily racking 
people nearly to death to get secrete from them; she- 
was daily ripping the bowels out of women as well as 
men for saying, or hearing, that mass, for the celebra- 
tion of which the churches of England had been erect* 
ed; she was daily mutilating, racking and butchering 
her own innocent and conscientious subjects; and yet^ 
she and her profligate court- women, when the French 
ambassador came with the King of France's explana- 
tion of the cause of the massacre, received him in deep 
mourning, and with all the marks of disapprobation. 
But, when she remonstrated with her " good brother," 
the King of France, and added her hope, that he would 
be indulgent to his Protestant subjects, her hypocrisy 
carried her a little too far; for, the Queen Mother, m 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 201 

her answer to u good Bess," observed, that, as to this 
matter, her son could not take a safer guide than his 
" good sister of England; 1 ' and that, while, like her, 
he forced no man's conscience ; like her he was resolved 
to suffer no man to practise any religion but that which 
he himself practised. The French Queen Mother was 
still short of " good Betsy's" mark; for she not only- 
punished the practice of all religion but her own, she, 
moreover, punished people for not practising her reli- 
gion ; though she herself was a notorious apostate, and 
that, too, from motives as notoriously selfish. 

294. But there is a tail-piece, which most admirably 
elucidates " good Betsy's" sincerity upon this memora- 
ble occasion, and also that same quality in her which 
induced her to profess, that she wished to live and die 
a virgin queen. The Parliament and her Ministers, 
anxious for an undisputed succession, and anxious also 
to keep out the Scotch branch of the royal family, 
urged her, several times, to marry. She always re- 
jected their advice. Her " virgin" propensity led her 
to prefer that sort of intercourse with men, which I 
need not more particularly allude to. Her amours 
with Leicester, of whom we shall see enough by- 
and-by, were open and notorious, and have been most 
amply detailed by many Protestant historians, some of 
whom have been clergymen of the Church of England; 
it is, moreover, well known, that these amours became 
the subject of a play, acted in the reign of Charles II. 
She was now, at the time of the St. Bartholomew, in the 
39th year of her age; and she was, as she long had 
been, leading with Leicester, the life that I have al- 
luded to. Ten years afterwards, whether from the ad- 
vanced age of Leicester, or from some other cause, the 
" virgin" propensity seemed, all of a sudden, to quit 
"good Betsy;" she became bent on wedlock; and, be- 
ing now forty-nine years of age, there was, to be sure, 
no time to be lost in providing an hereditary successor 
to her throne. She had in the 1 3th year of her reign, 
assented to an Act that was passed, which secured the 
crown to her " natural issue" by which any bastard 
that she might have by any body, became heir to the 
throne; and it was, by the sanie Act, made high treason, 



202 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

to deny that such issue was heir to it. This Act 7 
which is still in the Statute Book, 1 3 Eliz. chap. 1 . S. 
2., is a proof of the most hardened profligacy that ever 
was witnessed in woman, and it is surprising, that such 
a mark of apparent national abjectness and infamy 
should have been suffered to remain in black and white 
to this day. However, at forty-nine " good Betsy" 
resolved to lead a married life; and, as her savage fa- 
ther, whom she so much resembled, always looked out 
for a young wife, so "good virgin Betsy" looked out 
for a young husband; and, in order to convince the 
world of the sincerity of her horror at the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew, who should she fix on as a com- 
panion for life, who should she want to take to her arms 
but the Duke of Anjou, brother of Charles IX., and 

One of the perpetrators of thoeo bloody deeds, On ac- 
count of which she and court-ladies, all of her own 
stamp, had gone into mourning! The Duke was not 
handsome; but he had what the French call la beaute 
du diable: he was young: only 28 years of age; and 
her old paramour, Leicester, was now fifty ! Betsy, 
though well stricken in years herself, had still a " colt's 
tooth." Her Ministers and the nation, who saw all the 
dangers of such a match to the independence of their 
country, protested against it most vehemently, and finally 
deterred her from it; but a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, 
who had written and published a pamphlet against the 
marriage, was prosecuted, and had his right hand chop- 
ped off for this public-spirited effort in assisting to save 
England from the ruin about to be brought upon it, for 
the mere gratification of the appetite of a gross, libidi- 
nous, nasty shameless old woman. It was said of her 
monster of a father, who began the " Reformation," 
that " he spared no man in his anger, and no woman in 
his lust:" the very same, in substance, with a little 
change of the terms, might be said of this monster of 
a daughter, who completed that " Reformation ;'' and, 
something approaching to the same degree of wicked- 
ness might be justly ascribed to almost every one, who 
acted a conspicuous part in bringing about that, to 
Ungiand, impoverishing; and degrading event. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 203 

295. Before we come to the three other great trans- 
actions of the long reign of this wicked woman, her 
foul murder of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland; her 
war with Spain ; and her scourging of Ireland, which 
unhappy country still bears the marks of her scorpion 
lash; before we come to these, it will be necessary to 
make ourselves acquainted with the names and charac- 
ters of some of her principal advisers and co-ope- 
rators; because, unless we do this we shall hardly be 
able to comprehend many things, which we ought, 
nevertheless, to carry along clearly, in our minds. 

296. Leicester was her favourite both in council 
and in the field. Doctor Heylin, (History of the Re- 
formation, Elizabeth, p. 168,) describes him in these 
words: " Sir Robert Dudley, the second son of the 
" Duke of Northumberland," (the odious traitor exe- 
cuted in the last reign,) " she made, soon after she 
" came to the throne, Lord Denbeigh, and Earl of Lei- 
" cester, having before made him her Master of Horse, 
" Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and a Knight 
"of the Garter; and she now gave him the fair Manor 
" of Denbeigh, with more gentlemen owing suit and 
" service to it than any other in England in the hands of 
" a subject, adding even to this the goodly castle and ma- 
"nor of Kenilworth. Advanced to this height, he en- 
" grossed unto himself the disposing of all offices in court 
" and state, and of all preferments in the church, prov- 
" ing in fine, so unappeasable in his malice, and so insatia- 
"ble in his lusts, so sacrilegious in his rapines, so false 
" in promises, and so treacherous in point of trust, and 
" finally so destructive of the lives and properties of 
" particular persons, that his little finger lay far heavier 

^ on the English subjects, than the loins of all the fa- 
" vourites of the two last Kings." And, mind, those 
" two Kings" were the plundering and confiscating Hen- 
ry VIII. and Edward VI.! "And that his monstrous 
" vices might either be connived at, or not complained 
"of, he cloaks them with a seeming zeal for true re- 
" ligion, and made himself the head of the Puritan fac- 
" tion, who spared no pains in setting forth his praises; 
" nor was he wanting to caress them after such manner as 
" he found most agreeable to these holy hypocrites, using 



204 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" no other language in his speech and letters than the 
" Scripture phrase, in which he was as dexterous as if 
"he had received the same inspirations as the sacred 
" penmen." We must bear in mind, that this character 
is drawn by a Doctor of the Church of England, (Bet- 
sey's own Church,) in a work, dedicated by permission 
to King Charles II. She, beyond all doubt, meaned to 
marry Leicester, who had, as all the world believed, 
murdered his own wife to make way for the match. She 
was prevented from marrying him by the reports from 
her ambassadors of what was said about this odious pro- 
ceeding in foreign courts, and also by the remonstrances 
of her other Ministers. Higgins, an historian of dis- 
tinguished talent and veracity, states distinctly, that 
Leicester murdered his first wife for the purpose of 
marrying the Queen. He afterwards married, secret- 
ly, a second wife, and when she, upon his wanting to 
marry a third, refused to be divorced, he poisoned her; 
at least, so said a publication, called Leicester's Repub- 
lic, put forth in 1568. Yet, after all these things, this 
man, or, rather, this monster, continued to possess all 
his power and his emoluments, and all his favour with 
" the virgin Queen," to the last day of his life, which 
ended in 1588, after 30 years of plundering and op- 
pressing the people of England. This was a " reformer^ 
of religion, truly worthy of being enrolled with Henry 
VIII., Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell, and "good Queen 
Bess." 

297. Sir William Cecil was her next man. He 
was her Secretary of State; but, she afterwards made 
him a lord, under the title of Burleigh, and also made 
him Lord Treasurer. He had been a Protestant in the 
reign of Edward the Sixth, when he was Secretary- 
first under the Protector Somerset, who, when Dud- 
ley overpowered him, was abandoned by Cecil, who 
took to the latter, and was the very man that drew up 
the treasonable instrument, by which Edward, on his 
death-bed, disinherited his sisters Mary and Elizabeth. 
Pardoned for his treason by Mary, he became a most 
zealous Catholic, and was, amongst others, a volunteer 
to go over to Brussels to conduct Cardinal Pole to 
England. But, the wind having changed, he became 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 205 

Protestant again, and Secretary of State to " good Bet- 
ay, 5 ' who never cared any thing about the character or 
principles of those she employed, so that they did but 
answer her selfish ends This Cecil, who was a man 
of extraordinary abilities, and of still greater prudence 
and cunning, was the chief prop of her throne for near- 
ly /orft/ of the forty-three years of her reign. He died 
in 1598, in the 77th year of his age; and, if success in 
unprincipled artifice; if fertility in cunning devices; if 
the obtaining of one's ends without any regard to the 
means; if, in this pursuit, sincerity be to be set at 
nought, and truth, law, justice, and mercy, be to be 
trampled under foot; if, so that you succeed in your 
end, apostacy, forgery, perjury, and the shedding of in- 
nocent blood be to be thought nothing of, this Cecil was 
certainly the greatest statesman that e,ver lived Above 
all others he was confided in by the Queen, who, when 
he grew old, and feeble in his limbs, used to make him 
sit in her.presence, saying, in her accustomed masculine 
and emphatical style: "I have you, not for your weak 
legs, but for your strong head." 

298. Francis Walsingham became Secretary of 
State after Cecil; but, he had been employed by the 
Queen almost from the beginning of her reign. He had 
been her ambassador at several courts, had negotiated 
many treaties, was an exceedingly prudent and cunning 
man, and wholly destitute of all care about means, so 
that he carried his end. He was said tohcive fifty- three 
agents, and eighteen real spies in foreign courts. He 
was a most bitter and inflexible persecutor of the Ca- 
tholics; but, before his death, which took place in 1590, 
he had to feel himself a little of that tyranny and in- 
gratitude, and that want of mercy, which he had so 
long mainly assisted to make so many innocent persons 
feel. 

299. Paulet St. John, Marquis of Winchester. 
This was not a statesman. He, like n -.any more, was a 
backer-on. He presided at trials; and did other such- 
like works. These are unworthy of particular notice 
here, and Paulet is named merely as a specimen of 
the character and conduct of the makers and support- 
ers of the famous " reformation." This Paulet, (the 

18 



206 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

first noble of the family,) was, at his out-set, Steward 
to the Bishop of Winchester, in the time of Bishop Fox, 
in the reign of Henry VII. Ke was, by old brutal 
Harry VIII. made Treasurer Of the king's household, 
and, zealously entering- into all the views of that fa- 
mous " Defender of the Faith," he was made Lord St. 
John. He was one of those famous executors, who 
were to carry into effect the will of Henry VIII. — 
Though Harry had enjoined on these men to maintain 
his sort of half Catholic religion, Paulet now, in the 
reign of Edward, became a zealous Protestant, and 
continued to enjoy all his offices and emoluments, be- 
sides getting some new grants from the further spoils 
of the church and poor. Seeing, that Dudley was about 
to supplant Somerset, which he finally did, Paulet join- 
ed Dudley, and actually presided at the trial, and pass- 
ed sentence of death on Somerset, " whose very name," 
says Dr. Milner, " had, a littlo more than two years 
before, caused him to tremble." Dudley made him, 
first Earl of Wiltshire, and then Marquis of Winchester, 
and gave him the palace of the Bishop of Winchester 
at Bishop's Waltham, together with other spoils of that 
Bishoprick. W T hen Mary came, which was almost di- 
rectly afterwards, he became once more a Catholic, 
and continued to hold and enjoy all his offices and emo- 
luments. Not only a Catholic, but a most furious 
Catholic, and the most active and vigorous of all the 
persecutors of those very Protestants, with whom he 
had made it his boast to join in communion only about 
two years before ! JVe have heard a great deal about 
the cruelties of the " bloody BisHor Bonner;" but no- 
body ever tells us, that this Marquis of Winchester, as 
president of the council, frequently reprimanded Bon- 
ner, in very severe terms, for want of zeal and dili- 
gence in sending Protestants to the stake 1 Fox, says, 
that, " of the Council, the most active in these prosecu- 
tions was the Ma: ?uis of Winchester." But, now, Ma- 
ry beinef dead, and Elizabeth being resolved to extir- 
pate the Catholics, Paulet instantly became a Protest- 
ant again, a most cruel persecutor of the Catholics, 
president on several commissions for condemning them 
to death, and he was in such high favour with " good 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 207 

Bess," that she said, were he not so very old as he was, 
she would prefer him, as a husband, to any other man 
in her dominions. He died in the 13th year of her 
reign, at the age of 97, having kept in place during the 
reigns of five sovereigns, and having made four changes 
in his religion to correspond with the changes made by 
four out of the five. A French historian says, that 
Paulet being asked how he had been able to get 
through so many storms not only unhurt, but rising all 
the while, answered, " En etant un saule, et non pas un 
chene:" u by being a willoio, and not an oak" Our pre- 
sent prime Minister, who, in 1822, while collections 
were making for the starving Irish, ascribed the dis- 
tresses of the country to & surplus of food, seems also 
to be of this willoiv kind; for, with the exception of 
about fifteen months, he has been in place ever since he 
was a man. He was under Pitt the first time; Pitt 
went out, but he stuck in with Aldington; Addington 
w r ent out, but he stuck in again with Pitta second time; 
he was pushed quite out by the u Whigs;" but in he came 
again with the Duke of Portland; he stuck in with Per- 
ceval; and, at last, he got to the top, where he will re- 
main for his natural life, unless the paper money storm 
should tear even u willows" up by the roots. What this 
Bible-Saint would have done, if there had been a change 
of religion at every change of ministry, I shall not pre- 
tend to say. 

300. Such were the tools with which u good Bess" 
had to work; and we have now to see in what manner 
they all worked with regard to Mary Stuart, the 
celebrated and unfortunate queen of the Scotch. With- 
out going into her history, it is impossible to make it 
clearly appear how Betsy was able to establish the 
Protestant religion in England in spite of the people of 
England ; for it was, in fact, in spite of almost the whole 
of the people of all ranks and degrees. She actually 
butchered, that is to say, ripped up the bdlies, of some hun- 
dreds of them; she put many and many hundreds of them 
to the rack ; she killed, in various ways, many thousands; 
and she reduced to absolute beggary as many as made 
■the population of one of the smaller counties of Eng- 
land; to say nothing, at present, of that great slaughter- 



iiUO PROTESTANT REFORMATION . 

house, Ireland. It is impossible for us to see how she 
came to be able to do this: how she came to be able to 
get the parliament to do the many monstrous things 
that they did; how they, without any force, indeed, 
came to do such barefaced things, as to provide that 
any bastard that she might have should inherit the 
throne, a;;d to make it high treason to deny that such 
bastard was rightful heir to ihe throne. It is impossi- 
ble to account for her being able to exist in England af- 
ter that act of indelible infamy, the murder of Mary 
Stuart. It is impossible for us to see these things in 
their causes, unless we make ourselves acquainted with 
the history of Mary, and thereby show how the Eng- 
lish were influenced at this most interesting* period, the 
transactions of which were so decisive as to the fate of 
the Catholic religion in England. 

301. Mary Stuart, born in 1542, (nine years after 
the birth of Elizabeth,) was daughter of James V. King 
of Scotland, and of Mary of Lorraine, sister of that brave 
and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Guise, who as we 
have seen, was so basely murdered by the vile traitor 
Col'gni. Mary Stuart's father died when she was only 
eight days old; so that she became the reigning queea 
of Scotland, while in the cradle. Her father, (James 
V.) was the son of James IV. and Margaret the eldest, 
sister of the old savage Henry VIIL This c 'Defender of 
the Faith," wished Mary Stuart to. be betrothed to his- 
son Edward, and by that means to add Scotland to the 
dominions of England. The family of Guise were too 
deep for the old " Defender." Mary Stuart, (a Re- 
gency having been settled in Scotland,) was taken to 
France, where she had her education, and where her 
heart seemed to remain all her life. The French, in 
order to secure Scotland to themselves, as a constant 
ally against England, got Mary to be betrothed to 
Francis, Dauphin of France, son and successor of 
Henry II., king of France. She,-at the age of 17 years, 
was married to him, who was two years younger than 
herself, in 1558, the very year that Elizabeth mounted 
the throne of England. 

302. That very thing now took place which old Har- 
ry had been so much afraid of, and which a indeed, had 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 209 

teen tlie dread of his councillors and his people. Ed- 
ward was dead, Queen Mary was dead, and, as Eliza- 
beth was a bastard, both in law and in fact, Mary Stu- 
art was the heiress to % the throne of England, and she 
ims now the wife of the immediate heir to the king of 
France. Nothing could be so fortunate for Eliza- 
beth. The nation had no choice but one: to take her 
and uphold her; or, to become a great province of 
France. If Elizabeth had died at that time, or had 
died before her sister Mary, England must have be- 
come degraded thus; or, it must have created a new 
dynasty, or become a republic. Therefore it was, that 
all men, whether Catholics or Protestants, were for the 
placing and supporting of Elizabeth. on the throne; and 
for setting aside Mary Stuart, though unquestionably 
she was the lawful heiress to the crown of England. 

303. As if purposely to add to the weight of this mo- 
tive, of itself, weighty enough, Henry II., King of 
France, died in eight months after Elizabeth's acces- 
sion; so that Mary Stuart was now, 1559, Queen con- 
sort of France, Queen of Scotland, and called herself 
Queen of England ; she and her husband bore the arms 
of England along with those of France and Scotland; 
and the Pope had refused to acknowledge the right of 
Elizabeth to the English throne! Thus, as old Harry 
had foreseen, when he made his will setting aside the 
Scotch branch of his family, was England actually 
transferred to the dominion of France, unless the na- 
tion set at nought the decision of the Pope, and sup- 
ported Elizabeth. 

304. This was the real cause of Elizabeth's success 
in her work of extirpating the Catholic religion. Ac- 
cording to the decision of the bead of the Catholic 
church, Elizabeth was an usurper; if she were an usur- 
per, she ought to be set aside; if she were set aside, 
Mary Stuart and the King of France became Queen 
and King of England; if they became Queen and King 
of England, England became a mere province, ruled by 
S o chmen and Frenchmen, the bare idea of which 
was quite sufficient to put every drop of English blood 
in motion. All men, therefore, of all ranks in life, 
whether Protestants or Catholics, were for Elizabeth 

t-S* 



210 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

To preserve her life became an object dear to all her 
people, and, though her cruelties did, in one or two. 
instances arm Catholics against her life, as a body, 
they were as loyal to her as hei; Protestant subjects; 
and even when her knife was approaching their bow- 
els, they, without a single exception, declared her to 
be their lawful Queen. Therefore, though the deci- 
sion of the Pope was perfectly honest and just in it- 
self, that decision was, in its obvious and inevitable 
consequences, rendered, by a combination of circum- 
stances, so hostile to the greatness, the laws, the liber- 
ties, and the laudable pride of Englishmen, that they 
were reduced to the absolute necessity of setting his 
decision at nought,, or of surrendering their very name 
as a nation. But observe, by-the-by, this dilemma^ 
and all the dangers and sufferings that it produced, 
arose entirely out of the " Reformation. 5 ' Had the 
savage, old Harry listened to Sir Thomas More, and 
Bishop Fisher, there would have been no obstacle to 
the marrying of his son with Mary Stuart; and, be- 
sides, he would have had no children, whose legitima- 
cy could have been disputed, and, in all human proba- 
bility, several children to be, in lawful succession, heirs 
to the throne of England. 

305. Here we have the great, and, indeed, the only 
cause, of Elizabeth's success in rooting out the Catho- 
lic religion. Her people were, ninety-nine hundredths 
of them, Catholics. They had shown this clearly at 
the accession of her sister Mary. Elizabeth was as 
great a tyrant as ever lived; she was the most cruel of 
women; her disgusting amours were notorious; yet she 
was the most popular sovereign that had ever reigned 
since the days of Alfred; and we have thousands of 
proofs, that her people, of all ranks and degrees, felt a 
most anxious interest in every thing affecting her life or 
her health. Effects like this do not come from ordinary 
causes. Her treatment of great masses of her people, her 
almost unparalleled cruelties, her flagrant falsehoods, 
her haughtiness, her insolence and her lewd life, were 
naturally calculated to make herdestested, and to make 
her people pray for any thing that might rid them of 
her. But, they saw nothing but her between them and 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 211 

subjection to foreigners, a thing which they had always 
most laudably held in the greatest abhorrence. Hence 
it was, that the Parliament, when they could not prevail 
upon her, to marry, passed an Act to make any bastard 
(" natural is sue J"*) of her's, lawful heir to the throne. — 
Wttaker, (a clergyman of the church of England,) calls 
this a most infamous act. It was, in itself, an infamous 
act; but, that abjectness in the nation, which it now, at 
first sight appears to denote, disappears, when we con- 
sider well what I have stated above. To be preserved 
from Mary Stuart, from the mastership of the Scotch and 
the French, was at that time, the great object of anxiety 
with the English nation. Hume, whose head always runs 
upon something hostile to the Catholic religion, ascribes 
Elizabeth's popularity to the dislike that her people had 
to what he calls the " Romish superstition" Wita- 
ker ascribes the extirpation of the Catholic religion to 
the choice of her people, and not to her. The Catholic 
writers ascribe it to her cruelties ; and they are right so 
far; but, they do not, as I have endeavoured to do, 
show how it came to pass, that those numerous and un- 
paralleled cruelties came to be perpetrated with impu- 
nity to her and her Ministers. The question with the 
nation was, in short, the Protestant religion, Elizabeth 
and independence ; or, the Catholic religion, Mary Stu- 
art, and subjection to foreigners. They decided for the 
former, and hence all the calamities, and the final tragi- 
cal end of the latter lady. 

306. Mary Stuart was, in the year 1559, as we 
have seen in paragraph 303, on the highest pinnicle of 
earthly glory, Queen consort of France, Queen regnant 
of Scotland, Queen, in lawful right, of England, and 
was, besides, deemed one of the most beautiful women 
in the whole world. Never was fall like that of this 
queen. Her husband, Francis II., /lied seventeen 
months after his accession, and was succeeded by 
Charles IX., then not more than three years old. Her 
husband's mother, Catherine de Medici, soon con- 
vinced her, that to be any thing, she must return to 
Scotland. To Scotland she returned with a heavy heart, 
anticipating very little quiet in a country, which was 
plunged in all the horrors of the " reformation" even; 



212 PROTESTANT REFORMATION* 

more deeply than England bad been. Her long mino- 
rity, tog-ether with her absence from her dominions, 
had given rise to contending factions of nobles, who 
alternately triumphed over each other, and who kept 
the country in a state of almost incessant civil war, ac- 
companied with deeds of perfidy and ferocity, of which 
there is scarcely any parallel to be found in history, 
ancient or modern. Added to this w T as the work of the 
new Saints, who had carried the work of a reforma- 
tion" much further than in England. The famous John 
Knox, an apostate monk, whom Dr. Johnson calls the 
" Ruffian of the Reformation," was leader of the " ho- 
ly hypocrites," (as Dr. Heylin calls them,) in Scotland. 
Mary, who had been bred a Catholic, and who had al- 
most been deified in the court of France, was not likely 
to lead a happy life amongst people like these. 

307. All this, however, Elizabeth and her Ministers, 
and, (for let us have no disguise,) the English people, 
saw with great and ungenerous satisfaction. There 
was, for the present at least, an end to the danger from 
the union of Scotland with France. But, Mary Stuart 
might marry again. There were the powerful family 
of Guise, her near relations; and she was still a formi- 
dable person, especially to Elizabeth. If Mary had 
been a man, Betsy would certainly have married her; 
but here was a difficulty too great even for Cecil to 
overcome. The English Queen soon began to stir up 
factions and rebellions against her cousin;, and, indeed, 
by her intrigues with the religious factions and with the 
aspiring nobles, became in a short time, with the aid of 
her money, (a drug of infallible effect with the Scotch 
Teformers,) more the real ruler of Scotland than poor 
Mary was. She had, for the greater part of her whole 
reign, always a band of one faction or the other, at, or 
about, her court. Her object was to keep Mary from 
possessing any real power, an„d to destroy her, if, by 
any means short of detectable murder, she could effect 
that purpose. 

308. In 1565, about three years after the return of 
Mary to Scotland, she was married to Henry Stuart, 
Earl of Darnley, her cousin, in which she over-reach- 
ed the Queen of England, who, fearing that a visible 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 213 

heir to her own throne, (as it actually happened,) might 
come from this marriage, took desperate measures to 
prevent it; but, those measures came too late, Darn- 
ley, though young and handsome, proved to be a very 
foolish and disagreeable husband, and he was a Pro- 
testant into the bargain. She soon treated him with 
great contempt, suffered him to have no real authority, 
and, in fact, as good as banished him from her court 
and disowned him. Darnley sought revenge. He as- 
cribed his ill-treatment to Mary's being under the ad- 
vice and control of her Catholic favourites, and parti- 
cularly to the advice of Rizzio, a foreigner, her private 
secretary. Several mal-content u reformed 5 ' nobles 
joined with Darnley in agreeing to assist him, in the as- 
sassinating of Rizzio, taking a bond from him to pro- 
tect them against evil consequences. Mary was sitting 
at supper with some ladies of her court, Rizzio and 
other servants being in waiting, when the conspirators 
rushed in. Darnley went to the back of the Queen's 
chair; Rizzio seeing their object, ran to the Queen for 
protection; she who was in the sixth month of her 
pregnancy, endeavoured by entreaties and screams, to 
save his life. The ruffians stabbed him at her feet, and 
then dragged him out and covered his body .with 
wounds. 

309. This black and bloody transaction, for which 
not one of the assistants of Darnley was ever punish- 
ed, was, in all probability, the cause, the chief cause, 
of the just, though illegal killing of Darnley himself. 
The next year after the murder of Rizzio, 1567, Mary 
having, in the mean while, brought a son, (afterwards 
our James I. of half Pope and half Puritanical memo- 
ry,) Darnley was taken ill at Glasgow. The queen 
went to visit him, treated him with great 'kindness, 
and, when he hecame in better health, brought him 
back to Edinburgh; but, for the sake of better air, 
lodged him in a house, at some distance from other 
houses, out of the town, where she visited him daily, 
and where, in a room immediately under his, she slept 
every night. But, on the night of the 10th of Februa- 
ry, (1567,) she having notified it to him, slept at her 
palace, having promised to be present at the marriage 



216 PROTESTANT REFORM ATION. 

" was denominated a good man by the reformers of those 
u days." His great object was to extirpate the Catholic 
religion, as the best means of retaining his power; and, 
being also a " bold liar" and a man that stuck at no for- 
gery, no perjury, no bloody deed, that answered his 
purpose, he was a man after " good Queen Bess's" own 
heart. 

314. She, however, at first, affected to disapprove of 
his conduct, threatened to march any army to compel 
him to restore the Queen, gave the Queen positive as- 
surances of her support, and invited her to take, in 
case of need, shelter, and receive protection in England, 
In evil hour, Mary, confiding in these promises and 
invitations, took, contrary to the prayers of her faithful 
friends, on their knees, the fatal resolution to throw 
herself into the jaws of her who had so long thirsted 
for her blood. At the end of three days she found that 
she had escaped to a prison. Her prison was, indeed, 
changed two or three times; but a prisoner she remain- 
ed for nineteen long years; and was, at last, most sa-- 
vagely murdered for an imputed crime, which she nei- 
ther did nor could commit. 

315. During these nineteen years, Elizabeth was in- 
triguing with Mary's rebellious subjects, tearing Scot- 
land to pieces by means of her corruption, spread 
amongst the different bands of traitors, and inflicting on 
a people, who had never offended her, every species of 
evil that a nation can possibly endure. 

316. To enumerate, barely to enumerate, all, or one 
half, of the acts of hypocrisy, perfidy, meanness, and 
barbarity that " good Bess" practised against this un- 
fortunate queen, who was little more than twenty-five 
years of age when she was inveigled within the reach 
of her harpy claws; barely to enumerate these would 
require a space exceeding that of this whole Number. 
While she affected to disapprove of Murray, she insti- 
gated him to accuse his Queen and sister; while she 
pretended to assert the inviolability of sovereigns, she 
appointed a commission to try Mary for her conduct in 
Scotland- whilst she was vowing vengeance against the 
Scotch traitors for their rebellious acts against her cou- 
sin, she received, as presents from them, a large part of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 217 

the jewels which Mary had received from her first 
husband, the king of France; and when, at last, she 
was compelled to declare Mary innocent of having con- 
sented to the murder, she not only refused to restore her 
agreeably to her solemn promise repeatedly made, but 
refused also to give her her liberty, and, moreover, 
made her imprisonment more close, rigorous and pain- 
ful, than ever. Murray, her associate in perfidy, was 
killed in 1570, by a man whose estate he had unjustly 
confiscated; but, traitor after traitor succeeded him, eve- 
ry traitor in her pay, and Scotland bleeding all the while 
at every pore, because her cruel policy taught her that 
it was necessary to her own security. Witaker pro- 
duces a crowd of authorities to prove, that she endea- 
voured to get Mary's infant son into her hands, and that, 
having failed in that, she endeavoured to cause him to be 
taken off by poison ! 

317. At last, in 1587, the tygress brought her long 
suffering victim to the block! Those means of dividing 
aftd destroying, which she had, all her life long, been 
employing against others, began now to be employed 
against herself, and she saw her life in constant danger. 
She thought, and, perhaps, rightly, that these machina- 
tions against her arose from a desire in the Catholics, 
(and a very natural desire it was,) to rid the world of 
her and her horrid barbarities, and to make way for her 
Catholic, lawful successor, Mary; so that, now, nothing 
short of the death of this Queen seemed to her a com- 
petent guarantee for her own life. In order to open the 
way for the foul deed that had been resolved on, an act 
of parliament was passed, making it death for any one 
who was within the realm to conspire with others for 
the purpose of invading it, or, for the purpose of pro- 
curing the d:ath of the Queen. A seizure was made of 
Mary's papers. What was wanting in reality was, as 
Witaker has proved, supplied by forgery, "a crime," 
says he, " which, with shame to us, it must be confess- 
ed, belonged peculiarly to the Protestants." But, what 
right had Bess to complain of any hostile intention on 
the part of Mary? She was a Queen as well as herself. 
She wa held in prison by force ; not having been made 
prisoner in war* but having been perfidiously entrap- 
19 



216 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" was denominated a good man by the reformers of those 
"days." His great object was to extirpate the Catholic 
religion, as the best means of retaining his power; and, 
being also a " bold liar" and a man that stuck at no for- 
gery, no perjury, no bloody deed, that answered his 
purpose, he was a man after " good Queen Bess's" own 
heart. 

314. She, however, at first 5 affected to disapprove of 
his conduct, threatened to march any army to compel 
him to restore the Queen, gave the Queen positive as- 
surances of her support, and invited her to take, in 
case of need, shelter, and receive protection in England. 
In evil hour, Mary, confiding in these promises and 
invitations, took, contrary to the prayers of her faithful 
friends, on their knees, the fatal resolution to throw 
herself into the jaws of her who had so long thirsted 
for her blood. At the end of three days she found that 
she had escaped to a prison. Her prison was, indeed, 
changed two or three times; but a prisoner she remain- 
ed for nineteen long years; and was, at last, most sa- 
vagely murdered for an imputed crime, which she nei- 
ther did nor could commit. 

315. During these nineteen years, Elizabeth was in- 
triguing with Mary's rebellious subjects, tearing Scot- 
land to pieces by means of her corruption, spread 
amongst the different bands of traitors, and inflicting on 
a people, who had never offended her, every species of 
evil that a nation can possibly endure. 

316. To enumerate, barely to enumerate, all, or one 
half, of the acts of hypocrisy, perfidy, meanness, and 
barbarity that " good Bess" practised against this un- 
fortunate queen, who was little more than twenty-five 
years of age when she was inveigled within the reach 
of her harpy claws; barely to enumerate these would 
require a space exceeding that of this whole Number. 
While she affected to disapprove of Murray, she insti- 
gated him to accuse his Queen and sister; while she 
pretended to assert the inviolability of sovereigns, she 
appointed a commission to txy Mary for her conduct in 
Scotland- whilst she was vowing vengeance against the 
Scotch traitors for their rebellious acts against her cou- 
sin, she received, as presents from them, a large part of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 217 

the jewels which Mary had received from her first 
husband, the king of France; and when, at last, she 
was compelled to declare Mary innocent of having con- 
sented to the murder, she not only refused to restore her 
agreeably to her solemn promise repeatedly made, but 
refused also to give her her liberty, and, moreover, 
made her imprisonment more close, rigorous and pain- 
ful, than ever. Murray, her associate in perfidy, was 
killed in 1570, by a man whose estate he had unjustly 
confiscated; but, traitor after traitor succeeded him, eve- 
ry traitor in her pay, and Scotland bleeding all the while 
at every pore, because her cruel policy taught her that 
it was necessary to her own security. Witaker pro- 
duces a crowd of authorities to prove, that she endea- 
voured to get Mary's infant son into her hands, and that, 
having failed in that, she endeavoured to cause him to be 
taken off by "poison! 

317. At last, in 1587, the tygress brought her long 
suffering victim to the block! Those means of dividing 
and destroying, which she had, all her life long, been 
employing against others, began now to be employed 
against herself, and she saw her life in constant danger. 
She thought, and, perhaps, rightly, that these machina- 
tions against her arose from a desire in the Catholics, 
(and a very natural desire it was,) to rid the world of 
her and her horrid barbarities, and to make way for her 
Catholic, lawful successor, Mary; so that, now, nothing 
short of the death of this Queen seemed to her a com- 
petent guarantee for her own life. In order to open the 
way for the foul deed that had been resolved on, an act 
of parliament was passed, making it death for any one 
who was within the realm to conspire with others for 
the purpose of invading it, or, for the purpose of pro- 
curing the d-ath of the Queen. A seizure was made of 
Mary's papers. What was wanting in reality was, as 
Witaker has proved, supplied by forgery, "a crime," 
says he, " which, with shame to us, it must be confess- 
ed, belonged peculiarly to the Protestants" But, what 
right had Bess to complain of any hostile intention on 
the part of Mary? She was a Queen as well as herself. 
She wa held in prison by force ; not having been made 
prisoner in war; but having been perfidiously entrap- 
19 



218 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ped and forcibly detained. Every thing had been done 
against her short of spilling her blood; and, had she 
not a clear and indisputable right, to make war upon, 
and to destroy, her remorseless enemy, by all the means 
within her power? And, as to a trial, where was the 
law, or usage, that authorised one Queen to invite 
another into her dominions, then imprison her, and then 
bring her to trial for alleged offences against her? 

318. When the mode of getting rid of Mary was de- 
bated in " good Bess's" council, Leicester was for poi- 
son ; others were for hardening her imprisonment, and 
killing her in that way; but Walsingham was for 
death by means of a trial; a legal proceeding being the 
only one that would silence the tongues of the world. A 
commission was accordingly appointed, and Mary was 
tried and condemned ; and, that, too, on the evidence of 
papers, a part, at least, of which, were barefaced for- 
geries, all of which were copies, and the originals of 
none of which were attempted to be produced! The 
sentence of death was pronounced in October. For 
four months the savage u good Queen Bess," was em- 
ployed in devising plans for causing her victim to be as- 
sassinated, in order to avoid the odium of being herself 
the murderer! This is proved by Witaker beyond 
all possibility of doubt; but, though she had entrusted 
the keeping of Mary to two men, mortal enemies of the 
Catholics, they, though repeatedly applied to for the 
purpose, perseveringly refused. Having ordered her 
Secretary Davison, to' write to them on the subject, Sir 
Amias Paulet, one of the keepers, returned for an- 
swer, that he " was grieved at the motion made to him, 
" that he offered his life and his property to the disposal 
" of her Majesty; but absolutely refused to be concerned 
i( in the assassination of Mary." The other keeper, 
Sir Drue Drury, did the same. When she read this 
answer, she broke out into reproaches against them, 
complained of " the daintiness of their consciences," 
talked scornfully of " the niceness of such precise fel- 
lows," and swore that she would " have it done without 
their assistance." At the end, however, of four months 
of unavailing efforts to find men base and bloody enough 
to do the deed, she resorted to her last shift, the legal 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 219 

murder, which was committed on her hapless victim on 
the 8th of February, 1587, a day of everlasting infamy 
to the memory of the English Queen, " who," says 
Witaker, " had no sensibilities of tenderness, and no 
iC sentiments of generosity; who looked not forward to 
u the awful verdict of history, and who shuddered not 
" at the infinitely more awful doom of God. I blush, 
" as an Englishman, to think that this was done by an 
" English Queen, and one whose name I was taught to 
61 lisp in my infancy, as the honour of her sex, and the 
" glory of our isle.'' 

319. Ah! and thus was I taught ; and thus have we 
all been taught. It is surely then our duty to teach our 
children to know the truth. Talk of " answers" to me, 
indeed! Let them deny, if they can, that this she 
" Head of the Church" this maker of it, was a murder- 
er, and wished to be an assassin in cold blood. 



LETTER XL 

Bess's Hypocrisy as to the Death of Mary Stc 

art. 
Spanish Armada. 
Poor-Laws. 

Barbarous Treatment of Ireland. 
Bess's Inquisition. 

Horrid Persecution of the Catholics. 
The Racks and Tortures she employed. 
Her Death. 



Kensington, 30th Sept. 1825. 
My Friends, 

320. Detestably base as was the conduct of " good 
Queen Bess" in the act of murdering her unfortunate 
cousin, her subsequent . hypocrisy was still more de- 
testable. She affected the deepest sorrow for the act 
that had been committed, pretended that it had been 
4one against her wish, and had the superlative injustice 



220 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

and baseness to imprison her Secretary Davidson, for 
having dispatched the warrant for the execution, though 
she, observe, had signed that warrant, and though, as 
Witaker has fuily proved, she had reviled Davidson 
for not having dispatched it, after she had, in vain, used 
all the means in her power to induce him to employ as- 
sassins to do the deed. She had, by a series of perfi- 
dies and cruelties wholly without a parallel, brought her 
hapless victim to the block, in that very country to which 
she had invited her to seek safety; she had, in the last 
sad awful moments of that victim, had the barbarity to 
refuse her the consolations of a divine of her own com- 
munion; she had pursued her with hatred and malice 
that remained unglutted even when she saw her pros- 
trate under the common hangman and when she saw 
the blood gushing from her severed neck; unsated with 
the destruction of her body, she, Satan-like, had sought 
the everlasting destruction of her soul: and yet, the deed 

-.L n ~v/no, ouc imu mv, .. £ JJ3.U oaittii-nnc ujjiwwioj 

to affect to weep for the untimely end of her " dear cou- 
sin-" and, which was still more diabolical, to make use 
of her despotic power to crush her humane secretary, 
under pretence that he had been the cause of the sad ca- 
tastrophe! All expressions of detestation and horror 
fall short of our feelings, and our only consolation is, 
that we are to see her own end ten thousand times more 
to be dreaded than that of her victim. 

321. Yet, such were the peculiar circumstances of 
the times, that this wicked woman escaped, not only for 
the present, but throughout her long reign, that general 
hatred from her subjects, which her character and 
deeds so well merited: nay, it perversely happened, 
that, immediately after this foul deed, there took place 
an event, which rallied all her people round her, and 
made her life, more than ever, an object of their solici- 
tude. 

822, Philip II., King of Spain, who was also sove- 
reign of the Low Countries, resolved on an invasion 
of England, with a fleet from Spain, and with an army 
from Flanders. ' She had given him quite provocation 
enough; she had fomented rebellions against him, as she 
long had in France against the king of that country ,-*»*■ 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 221 

Philip was the most powerful monarch in Europe; he 
had fleets and armies vastly superior to hers; the dan- 
ger to England was really great; but, though these dan- 
gers had been brought upon it solely by her ma- 
lignity, bad faith, and perfidy, England was still Eng- 
land to her people, and they unanimously rallied round 
her. On this occasion, and, indeed, on all others, where 
love of country was brought to the test, the Catholics 
proved that no degree of oppression could make them 
forget their duty as citizens, or as subjects. Even from 
Hume it is extorted, that the Catholic gentlemen, though 
her laws excluded them from all trust and authority^ 
" entered as volunteers in her fleet or army. Some 
" equipped ships at their own charge, and gave the 
"command of them to Protestants: others were active 
" in animating their tenants and vassals and neighbours, 
** to the defence of their country: and, every rank of men 
u burying, for the present, all party distinctions, seemed 
" to prepare themselves, with ardor as well as vigour, 
" to resist these invaders.'' Charles I. , James II., George 
I. and George II. and even George III., all saw the time, 
when they might have lamented the want of similar loy- 
alty in Protestants. The first lost his head; the second 
his throne; the third and fourth were exposed to great 
danger of a similar loss; and the fifth lost America; and 
all by the doings of Protestants. 

323. The intended invasion was prevented by a tre- 
mendous storm, which scattered and half destroyed the 
Spanish fleet, called the Armada, and, in all human 
probability, the invaders would not have succeeded, 
even if no storm had arisen. But, at any rate, there 
was great danger ; no one could be certain of the result; 
the Catholics, had they listened to their just resentment, 
might have greatly added to the danger; and, therefore, 
their generous conduct merited some relaxation of the 
cruel treatment, which they had hitherto endured under 
her iron sceptre. No such relaxation, however, took 
place: they were still treated with every species of bar- 
barous cruelty; subjected to an inquisition infinitely 
more severe than that of Spain ever had or ever has been; 
and, even on the bare suspicion of disaffection, imprison- 
ed, racked, and not unfrequently put to death. 
19* 



&%% PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

324. As to Ireland, where the estates of the convents, 
and where the church property had been confiscated in 
the same way as in England, and where the greater dis- 
tance of the people from the focus of power and apos- 
tacy and fanaticism, had rendered it more difficult to ef- 
fect their u conversion" at the point of the bayonet, or 
by the haltar or the rack; as to this portion of her domin- 
ions, her reign was almost one unbroken series of robbe- 
ries and butcheries. One greedy and merciless minion 
after another were sent to goad that devoted people in- 
to acts of desperation; and that, too, not only for the 
obvious purpose, but for the avowed purpose of obtain- 
ing a pretence for new confiscations. The " Reforma- 
tion" had, from its very outset, had plunder written on 
its front; but, as to Ireland, it was all plunder from the 
crown of its head to the sole of its foot. This horri- 
ble lynx-like she-tyrant could not watch each move- 
ment of the Catholics there, as she did in England; she 
could not so harass them in detail; she could find there no 
means of executing her dreadful police; and therefore 
slie murdered them in masses. She sent over those par- 
sons whose successors are there to the present day. — 
The ever blood-stained sword secured them the tythes 
and the church-lands ; but even that blood-stained sword 
could not then, and never did, though at one time wield- 
ed by the unsparing and double-distilled Protestant, 
Cromwell, obtain them congregations. However, she 
planted, she watered with rivers of blood, and her long 
reign saw take fast root in the land, that tree, the fruit 
of which the unfortunate Irish taste to this hour; and 
which will, unless prevented by more wise and more 
just measures than appear to have been yet suggested, 
finally prove the overthrow of England herself. 

325. I am to speak, further on, of the monstrous im- 
moralities produced in England by the " Reformation" 
•and also of the poverty and misery that it produced; and 
then I shall have to trace, (through Acts of Parliament) 
this poverty and misery up to the " Reformation;" yes, 
for therein we shall see, clearly as we see the rivulet 
"bubbling out of the bed of the spring, the bread and 
water of England and the potatoes of Ireland; but, even 
in this place, it is necessary to state the cause of the 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 22tf 

greater poverty and degradation of the Irish people. — 
For ages, that ill-treated people have, in point of cloth- 
ing and food, formed a contrast with the English. Dr. 
Franklin, in speaking of Ireland, says, that "one would 
" think thaW/ie cast-off clothes of the working-people of 
" England were sent over to be worn by the working-peo- 
" pie here.'''' 

326. Whence comes it that this contrast has so long 
existed? The soil and the climate of Ireland are as 
good as those of England. The islands are hut a few 
miles asunder. Both are surrounded by the same sea. 
The people of the former are as able and as willing to 
labour as those of the latter; and of this they have 
given proof in all parts of the world, to which they 
have migrated, not to carry packs to cheat fools, out of 
their money, not to carry the lash to make others work, 
but to share themselves, and cheerfully to share in the 
hardest labours of those amongst whom they have 
sought shelter from the rod of unrelenting oppression. 
Whence comes it, then, that this contrast, so unfavoura- 
ble to Ireland, has so long existed? The answer to this 
interesting question we shall find by attending to the 
different measures, dealt out to the two people, during 
the long and cruel reign of which we are now speak- 
ing; and we, at the same time, trace all the miseries 
of Ireland, back, at once, to that u Reformation," the 
blessings of which have, with such persevering false- 
hood and hypocrisy, been dinned in our ears for ages. 

327. We have seen, in Letter III. of this little work, 
paragraphs 50, 51, and 52, that the Catholic Church 
was not, and is not an affair of mere abstract faith; 
that it was not so very spiritual a concern as to scorn 
all care relative to the bodies of the people; that one 
part, and that a capital part, of its business was, to 
cause works of charity to be performed; that this char- 
ity was not of so very spiritual a nature as not to be at 
all tangible, or obvious to the vulgar sense; that it 
showed itself in good works, done to the needy and 
suffering j that the tithes and offerings and income from real 
property, of the Catholic Church, went, in great part, 
to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to lodge and 
feed the stranger, to sustain the widow and the orphan, 



£24 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

and to heal the wounded and the sick; that, in short, 
a great part, and indeed one of the chief parts, of the 
business of this Church was, to take care, that no per- 
son, however low in life, should suffer from want either 
of sustenance or care; and that the priests of this 
Church should have as few selfish cares as possible to 
withdraw them from this important part of their duty, 
they were forbidden to marry. Thus, as long as this 
Church was the national Church, there were hospitality 
and charity in the land, and the horrid word "pauper" 
had never been so much as thought of. 

328. But, when the Protestant religion came, and 
along with it a married priesthood, the poorer classes 
were plundered of their birth-right, and thrown out 
to prowl about for what they could beg or steal. Lu- 
ther and his followers wholly rejected the doctrine, 
that good works were necessary to salvation. They 
held, that faith, and faith alone, was necessary. They 
expunged from their Bible, the Epistle of Saint James, 
because it recommends, and insists on the necessity of, 
good works; which Epistle Luther called, "an Epistle 
of straw." The "Reformers" differed from each 
other, as widely as the colours of the rainbow, in most 
other things; but, they all agreed in this, that, good 
works were unnecessary to salvation, and that the 
u saints," as they had the modesty to call themselves, 
could not forfeit their right to heaven by any sins, how- 
ever numerous and enormous. By those, amongst 
whom plunder, sacrilege, adultery, polygamy, incest, 
perjury, and murder were almost as habitual as sleep- 
ing and waking; by those, who taught that the way to 
everlasting bliss could not be obstructed by any of 
these, nor by all of them put together; by such per- 
sons, charity, besides that it was a so well-known Ca- 
tholic commodity, would be, as a matter of course, set 
wholly at naught. 

329. Accordingly we see that it is necessarily ex- 
cluded by the very nature of all Protestant establish- 
ments; that is to say, in reality; for the name? of chari- 
ty is retained by some of these establishments; but, the, 
substance no where exists. The Catholic establish- 
ment interweaves deeds of constant and substantial 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 225 

charity with the faith itself. It makes the two insepa- 
rable. The Douay Catechism, which the Protestant 
"parsons so much abuse, says, that u the first fruit of 
the Holy Ghost is charity." And, then, it tells us what 
charity is: namely, "to teed the hungry, to give drink 
" to the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to visit and ransom 
"" captives, to harbour the harbourless, to visit the sick, 
" to bury the dead."" Can you guess, my friends, why 
fat Protestant parsons rail so loudly against this "wick- 
ed Douay Catechism?" It is in the nature of me to 
love all this. This is what " the gales of hell will 
never prevail against" This is what our fathers be- 
lieved, and what they acted upon; and this it was that 
produced in them that benevolent disposition which, 
thank God, has not yet been wholly extirpated from the 
breasts of their descendants. 

330. Returning now, to paragraphs 50, 5 1 , and 52, 
just mentioned; it is there seen, that the Cathplic Church 
rendered all municipal laws about the poor wholly un- 
ttbtXCSary ; but, when that Church h«d been plundered 
and destroyed; when the greedy leading " Reformers" 
had sacked the convents and the churches; when those 
great estates, which of right bnonged to the poorer 
classes, had been taken from them; when the parson- 
ages had been first well pillaged, and the remnant of 
their revenues given to married men ; then the poor, 
(for poor there will and must be in every community,) 
were left destitute of the means of existence, other than 
the fruits of begging, theft, and robbery. Accordingly, 
when " good queen Bess" had put the finishing hand to 
the plundering of the Church and poor, once-happy 
and free and hospitable England became a den of fam- 
ishing robbers and slaves. Strype, a Protestant, and 
an authority to whom Hume appeals and refers many 
hundreds of times, tells us of a letter from a Justice of 
the Peace in Somersetshire to the Lord Chief Justice, 
saying; " I may justly say, that the able men that are 
" abroad, seeking the spoil and confusion of the land, 
" are able, if they were reduced to good subjection, to 
" give the greatest enemy her Majesty hath, a strong 
" battle, and, as they are now, are so much strength 
"to the enemy. Besides, the generation that daily 






226 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" springefh from them, is likely to be most wicked, 
" These spare neither rich nor poor; but, whether it be 
" great gain or small, all is fish that cometh to net with 
" them; and yet I say, both they and the rest are truss- 
" ed up a-pace." The same Justice says: " In default 
" of justice, many wicked thieves escape. For most 
" commonly the most simple countrymen and women, 
"looking no further than to the loss of their own goods, 
" are of opinion that they would not procure any man's 
" death, for all the goods in the world." And while 
the " good Bess" complained bitterly of the non-execu- 
tion of her laws, the same Protestant historian tells 
us, that " she executed more than five hundred criminals 
" in a year, and was so little satisfied with that number,. 
" that she threatened to send private persons to see her 
" penal laws executed 'for profit and gain's sake.'' It 
" appears that she did not threaten in vain; for soon 
" after this, a complaint was made in Parliament, that 
"the stipendary magistrate of that day was ' a kind of 
" living creature, who for half a dozen of chickens, 
" would dispense with a dozen of penal statutes." She 
did not, however, stop, with this " liber al" use of the 
gallows. Such was the degree of beggary, of vagabond- 
age and of thievishness and robbery, that she resorted^ 
particularly in London and its neighbourhood, to mar- 
tial law. This fact is so complete a proof of the hor- 
rible effects of the " Reformation" upon the moral 
state of the people, and it is so fully characteristic of 
the Government, which the people of England had, in 
consequence of that Reformation, became so debased 
as to submit to, that I must take the statement as it 
stands in Hume, who gives the very words of " good 
and glorious Bess's" commission to her head murderer 
upon this occasion. " The streets of London were 
" very much infested with idle vagabonds and riotous 
"persons: the Lord Mayor had endeavoured to repress 
" this disorder: the Star-chamber had exerted its au- 
" thority, and inflicted punishment on these rioters. But 
" the Queen, finding these remedies ineffectual, revived" 
[revived! What does he mean by revived?] " martial 
" law, and gave Sir Thomas Wilford a commission 
" as Provost-martial: c Granting him authority and com- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 227 

*• manding him, upon signification given by the justices 
" of the peace in London or the neighbouring counties, 
" of such offenders, worthy to be speedily executed by 
" martial law, to take them, and according to the justice 
" of martial law, to execute them upon the galloivs or 
"gibbet." And yet, this is she, whom we have been 
taught to call " good Queen Bess," of the "glories" of 
whose reign, there are men of learning base enough to 
talk, even to this day ! 

331. But, such were the natural consequences of the 
destruction of the Catholic Church, and of the plunder- 
ing of the poor, which accompanied that destruction, 
and particularly of lodging all power, ecclesiastical and 
civil, in the same hands. However, though this terri- 
ble she-tyrant spared neither racks nor halters, though 
she was continually reproving the executors of her 
bloody laws for their remissness while they were strew- 
ing the country with the carcasses of malefactors or al- 
leged malefactors, all would not do; that hunger, which 
breaks through stone walls, set even her terrors and 
torments at defiance*, at last, it was found to be abso- 
lutely necessary to make some general and permanent 
and solid provision for the poor ; and, in the 43d year 
of her reign, was passed that Act, which is in force to 
this day, and which provides a maintenance for indi- 
gent persons, which maintenance is to come from the 
land, assessed and collected by overseers, and the pay- 
ment enforced by process the most effectual and most 
summary. And here we have the great, the promi- 
nent, the staring, the horrible, and ever-durable con- 
sequence of the " Reformation;' 1 that is to say, pauper- 
ism established by law. 

332. Yet this was necessary. The choice that the 
plunderers had in England was this: legal pauperism, 
or, extermination , and this last they could not effect, 
and if they could, it would not have suited them. They 
did not possess power sufficient to make the people 
live in a state of three -fourths starvation, therefore, 
they made a legal provision for the poor: not, however, 
till they had tried in vain all other methods of obtaining 
a something to supply the place of Catholic charity, 
-They attempted, at first, to cause the object to be ef- 



228 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

fected by voluntary collections at the churches ; but, 
alas! those who now entered those churches, looked 
upon Luther as the great teacher; and he considered 
Saint James's Epistle as an "epistle of straw." Ev- 
ery attempt of this sort having failed, as it necessarily 
must, when the parsons, who were to exhort others to 
charity, had enough to do to rake together all they 
could for their own wives and children; every Act, (and 
there were many passed.) short of a compulsory tax, 
enforced by distraint of goods, and imprisonment of 
person, having failed, to this " glorious Bess" and her 
"Reformation" Parliament at last came; and here we 
have it to this day, filling the country with endless 
quarrels and litigation, setting parish against parish, 
man against master, rich against poor, aud producing, 
from a desire of the rich to shuffle out of its provi- 
sions, a mass of hypocrisy, idleness, fraud, oppres- 
sion, and cruelty, such as was, except in the deeds of 
the original u Reformers," never before witnessed in 
the world. 

333. Nevertheless, it was, as far as it went, an act of 
justice. It was taking from the land and giving to the 
poor, a part, at least, of what they had been robbed of 
by the "Reformation." It was doing, in a hard and 
odious way, a part of that which had been done in the 
most gentle and amiable way by the Church of our fa- 
thers. It was, indeed, feeding the poor like dogs, in- 
stead of like one's children; but it was feeding them. 
Even this, however, the " good Bess" and her plunder- 
ing minions thought too much to do for the savagely 
treated Irish people; and here we come to the real cause 
of that contrast, of which I have spoken in paragraph 
325; here we come to that which made Dr. Franklin 
suppose, or, to say, that any one might naturally sup- 
pose, that " the old clothes of the working classes in 
" England had been sent over to be worn by the same 
" class in Ireland." 

334. We have seen how absolute necessity compel- 
led " good Bess' 1 and her plunderers to make a legal pro- 
vision for the relief of the indigent in England; we have 
seen, that it was only restoring to them a part of that of 
which they had been plundered; and, upon what prin- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 229 

ciple was it, that they did not do the same with regard 
to the people of Ireland? These had been plundered in 
precisely the same manner that the former had; they had 
been plunged into misery by precisely the same means, 
used under precisely the same hypocritical pretences; 
why were not they to be relieved from that misery in 
the same manner; and why was not the poor law to be ex- 
tended to Ireland! 

SS5. Base and cruel plunderers! They grudged' the 
relief in England; but, they had no compulsory means to 
be obtained out of England ; and they found it impos- 
sible to make Englishmen compel one another to live in 
a state of three-fourths starvation. But, they had Eng- 
land to raise armies in to send to effect this purpose in 
Ireland, especially when those English armies were urg- 
ed on by promised plunder, and were, (consisting as they 
did of Protestants,) stimulated by motives as powerful, 
or nearly so, as the love of plunder itself. Thus it was, 
that Ireland was pillaged without the smallest chance of 
even the restoration which the English obtained; and 
thus have they, down unto this our day, been a sort of 
outcast in their own country, being stripped of all the 
wordly goods that God and nature allotted them, and 
having received not the smallest pittance in return. We 
talk of " the outrages in Ireland ;" we seem shocked at 
the violences committed there; and that sapient profound, 
candid and modest gentleman, Mr. Adolphus, the other 
day, in pleading at one of the police-offices in London, 
(a sphere to which his talents are exceedingly well adapt- 
ed,) took occasion, sought occasion, went out of his way 
to find occasion, to " thank God" that we, on this side 
of St. George's channel, knew nothing of those outrages, 
which, when they were mentioned to the Irish, they as- 
cribed to the misrule of ages. Now, it might be a lit- 
tle too much to expect an answer of any sort from a law- 
yer so dignified as this police-pleader; but, let me ask 
any English gentleman, or, any Englishman of any rank, 
except Mr. Adolphus, what he thinks would be the 
consequences here, if the poor-laws were abolished to- 
morrow? Mr. Adolphus can hardly help knowing, that 
Parson Malthus and his tribe have been preaching up 
the wisdom of such abolition; he may remember, too, 
20 



230 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

(for the example was terrific,) that Mr. Scarlett was 
" twisted down" in consequence of his having had the 
folly to mould this preposition of Malthus into the form 
of a Bill; but, Mr. Adolphus may not know, that pe- 
titions were preparing against that Bill, and that, too, 
from the payers of the poor-rates, stating, that, if such 
Bill were passed, there would be no safety for their pro- 
perty or their lives. Let us, then, have a little justice, 
at any rate, and, above all things, let us not, adding blas- 
phemy to ignorance, insolence, and low, mob-courting 
sycophancy, " thank God" for the absence of outrages 
amongst us, as the wolf, in the fable, "thanked God" 
that he was not ferocious. 

336. Why, there have been " ages of misrule" in Ire- 
land, many, many ages too; or the landholders of Eng- 
land have, during those ages, been most unjustly assessed. 
But, they are sensible, or, at least, the far greater part 
of them, that a provision for the indigent, a settled, cer- 
tain, legal provision, coming out of the land, is a right 
which the indigent possessed, to use the words of Black- 
stone, " in the very nature of civil society." Every 
man of reflection must know, that the labours, which 
the affairs of society absolutely demand, could never 
be performed but by persons who work for their bread; 
he must see that a very large part of these persons will do 
no more work than is necessary to enable them to supply 
their immediate wants ; and, therefore, he must see, that 
(here always must be, in every community, a great 
number of persons who, from sickness, old age, from 
being orphans, widows, insane, and from other causes, 
will need relief from some source or other. This is the 
lot of civil society, exist wherever and however it may, 
and it will require a solider head than that which is on 
the shoulders of Mr. Scarlett, to show, that this need 
of relief to which all are liable, is not a necessary ingre- 
dient in the cement of civil society. The United States 
of America is a very happy country. The world has 
never yet seen a people better off. But, though the 
Americans cast oil their allegiance to our king; though 
they abolished the moiiarehial rights; though they cast 
oil the aristocracy of England; though they cast off the 
Church of England; they did not cast of the English 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 231 

poor-laws ; and this very act of turbulent Bess, extort- 
ed from her by their English forefathers, is, at this mo- 
ment, as completely in force in New York as it is in Old 
York, in New London as in Old London, in New Hamp- 
shire, as in Old Hampshire, and in that whole country, 
from one end to the other, as it is in Old England herself. 

337. Has it not, then, been a " misrule of ages'*'' in Ire- 
land ? Have not that people been most barbarously treat- 
ed by England? An Irishman, who has a thousand times 
been ready to expire from starvation in his native land, 
who has been driven to steal sea weed to save himself 
from death, goes to America, feels hunger without hav- 
ing the means of relieving it; and there, in that foreign 
land, he finds, at once, be he where he may, an over- 
seer of the poor, ready to give him relief ! And, is such 
monstrous, such crying injustice as this still to be allow- 
ed to exist? The folly here surpasses, if possible, the 
injustice and the cruelty. The English landholders 
make the laws: we all know that. They subject, just- 
ly subject, their own estates to assessments for the re- 
lief of the poor in England; and, while they do this, 
they exonerate the estates of the Irish landholders from 
a like assessment, and chose rather to tax themselves 
and to tax us and tax the Irish besides, for the purpose 
of paying an army to keep that starving people from ob- 
taining relief by force! Lord Liverpool, when the 
Scotch Lords and others applied to him, in 1816, for a 
grant out of the taxes, to relieve the starving manufac- 
turers in Scotland, very wisely and justly said, " No : 
have poor-laws, such as ours, and then your poor will be 
sure of relief" Why not say the same , thing to the 
Irish landholders? Why not compel them to give to the 
people that which is their due? Why is Ireland to be 
the only civilized country upon the face of the earth, 
where no sort of settled, legal provision is made for the 
indigent, and where the Pastors are, at the same time, 
total strangers to the flocks, except in the season of 
shearing? Let us, at least, as long as this state of things 
shall be suffered to exist, have the decency not to cry 
out quite so loudly against the " outrages of the Irish" 

338. I must now return from this digression, (into 
which the mention of u good Bess's" barbarous treat- 



232 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ment of Ireland has led me,) in order to proceed with 
my account of her "reforming" projects. Betsy was a 
great Doctor of Divinity. She was extremely jealous 
of her prerogatives and powers, but particularly in 
what regarded her headship of the Church. She would 
make all her subjects be of her religion, though she had 
solemnly sworn, at her coronation, that she was a Ca- 
tholic, and though, in turning Protestant, she had made 
a change in Cranmer's prayer-book and in his articles 
of faith. In order to bend the people's consciences to 
her tyrannical will, which was the more unjust, because 
she herself had changed her religion, and had even 
changed the Protestant articles, she established an in- 
quisition the most horrible that ever was heard of in the 
world. She gave what she called a Commission to cer- 
tain Bishops and others, whose power extended over 
the whole kingdom, and over all ranks and degrees 
of the people. They were empowered to have an 
absolute control over the opinions of all men, and to 
punish all men according to their discretion, short of 
death. They might proceed legally, if they chose, in 
the obtaining of evidence against parties; but, if they 
chose, they were to employ imprisonment, the rack, or 
torture of any sort for this purpose. If their suspicions 
alighted upon any man, no matter respecting what, and 
they had no evidence, nor any even hearsay, against 
him, they might administer an oath, called ex-officio, to 
him, by which he was bound, if called upon, to reveal 
his thoughts, and to accuse himself, his friend, his bro- 
ther, or his father, upon pain of death. These subal- 
tern monsters inflicted what fines they pleased; they im- 
prisoned men for any length of time that they pleased. 
They put forth whatever new articles of faith they 
pleased; and in short, this was a Commission exercising, 
in the name and for the purposes of " good Queen Bess," 
an absolute control over the bodies and the minds of that 
people, whom the base and hypocritical and plundering 
"reformers" pretended to have delivered from a " slav- 
ish subjection to the Pope," but whom they had, with- 
out any pretending, actually delivered from freedom. 
charity, and hospitality. 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 233 

339. When one looks at the deeds of this foul tyrant, 
when one sees what abject slavery she had reduced the 
nation to, and especially when one views this Commis- 
sion, it is impossible for us not to reflect with shame 
on what we have so long been saying against the Span- 
ish Inquisition, which, from its first establishment to the 
present hour, has not committed so much cruelty as this 
ferocious Protestant apostate committed in any one sin- 
gle year of the forty-three years of her reign. And, 
observe again, and never forget, that Catholics, where 
they inflicted punishments, inflicted them on the ground, 
that the offenders had departed from the faith in which 
they had been bred and which they had professed; 
whereas the Protestant punishments have been inflicted 
on men because they refused to depart from the faith in 
which they had been bred, and which they professed 
all their lives. And, in the particular case of this 
brutal hypocrite, they were punished, and that too, in 
the most barbarous manner, for adhering to that very 
religion, which she had openly professed for many years 
of her life, and to which she, even at her coronation, 
had sworn that she belonged ! 

340. It is hardly necessary to attempt to describe 
the sufferings that the Catholics had to endure during 
this murderous reign. No tongue, no pen is adequate 
to the task. To hear mass, to harbour a priest, to ad- 
mit the supremacy of the Pope, to deny this horrid vi- 
rago's spiritual supremacy, and many other things, 
which an honourable Catholic could scarcely avoid, 
consigned him to the scaffold and to the bowel -ripping 
knife. But, the most cruel of her acts, even more cru- 
el than her butcheries, because of far more extensive 
effect, and far more productive of suffering in the end^ 
were the penal laws inflicting fines for recusancy, that 
is to say, for not going to her new-fangled Protestant 
church. And, was there ever tyranny equal to this? 
Not only were men to be punished for not confessing 
that the new religion was the true one; not only for con- 
tinuing to practice the religion in which they and their 
fathers and children had been born and bred; but also 
punished for not actually going to the new assemblages ? 
and there performing what thev must, if thev were sin- 

20* 



2-34 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

cere, necessarily deem an act of open apostacy and 
blasphemy! Never, in the whole world, was there 
heard of before tyranny equal to this. 

341. The fines were so heavy, and were exacted 
with such unrelenting* rigour, and, for the offence of 
recusancy alone, the sums were so enormous, that the 
whole of the conscientious Catholics were menaced 
with utter ruin. The priests who had never been out 
of England, and who were priests before the reign of 
this horrible woman, were, by the 20th year of her 
reign few in number, for the laws forbade the making 
of any new ones on pain of death, and, indeed, none 
oould be made in England, where there was no clerical 
authority to ordain them, the surviving Catholic bishops 
being forbidden to do it on pain of death. Then she harass- 
ed the remainder of the old priests in such a way, that they 
were, by the 20th year of her reign, nearly exterminated; 
and,, as it was death for a priest to come from abroad, 
death to harbour him, death for him to perform his 
functions in England, death to confess to him, there ap- 
peared to be an impossibility of preventing her from 
extirpating, totally extirpating from the land, that reli- 
gion under which England had been so great and so 
happy for ages so numerous; that religion of charity 
and hospitality, that religion which made the name of' 
pauper unknown; that religion which had built the 
churches and cathedrals, which had planted and reared 
the Universities, whose professors had made Magna 
Charta and the Common-Law, and who had performed 
all those glorious deeds in legislation and in arms, which 
had made England really "the envy of surrounding na- 
tions and the admiration of the world: 7 ' there now ap- 
peared to be an impossibility, and especially if the ter- 
magant tyrant should live for another twenty years, 
(which she did,) to prevent her from effecting this 
total extirpation. From accomplishing this object she 
was prevented by the zeal and talents of William Al- 
len, an English gentleman, now a priest, and who had 
before been of the University of Oxford. In order to 
defeat the she-tyrant's schemes for rooting out the Ca- 
rbolic religion, he formed a Seminary at Douay, in 
Flanders, for the education of English priests. He 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 285 

was joined by many other learned men; and, from this 
depot, though at the manifest hazard of their lives, 
priests came into England; and thereby the malignity 
of this inexorable apostate was defeated. There was 
the sea between her and Allen, but while he safely 
defied her death-dealing power, she could not defy his, 
for she could not erect a wall round the island, and into 
it, priests would come, and did come; and, in spite of 
her hundreds of spies and her thousands of "pursui- 
vants ," as* were called the myrmidons who executed her 
tormenting and bloody behests, the race of English 
priests was kept in existence, and the religion of their 
fathers along with it. In order to break up the semi- 
nary of Allen, who was afterwards made a Cardinal, 
and whose name can never be pronounced but with 
feelings of admiration, she resorted to all sorts of 
schemes; and, at last, by perfidiously excluding from 
her ports the fleet of the Dutch and Flemish insurgents, 
to whom she stood pledged to give protection, she ob- 
tained from the Spanish Governor, a dissolution of Al- 
len's college; but, he found protection in France, from 
the House of Guise, by whom he and his college were, 
in spite of most bitter remonstrances from " good Bess" 
to the King of France, re-established at Rheims. 

342. ffhus defeated in all her projects for destroying 
the missionary trunk, she fell with more fury than ever 
on the branches and on the fruit. To say mass, to hear 
mass, to make confession, to hear confession, to teach 
the Catholic religion, to be taught it, to keep from her 
church service : these were all great crimes, and all punish- 
ed with a greater or less degree of severity; so that the 
gallowses and gibbets and racks were in constant use, 
and the jails and dungeons choking with the victims. The 
punishment for keeping away from her church was 20/. 
a lunar month, which, of money of the present day, 
was about 250/. Thousands upon thousands refused to 
go to her church; and thus she sacked their thousands 
upon thousands of estates; for, observe, here was, in 
money of this day, a fine of 3,250/. a year. And now, 
sensible and just reader, look at the barbarity of this 
" Protestant Reformation." See a gentleman of, per- 
haps, sixty years of age or more; see him, born and 



236 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

bred a Catholic, compelled to make himself and his 
children beggars, actual beggars, or to commit what 
he deemed an act of apostacy and blasphemy. Imagine, 
if you can, barbarity equal to this; and yet even this is 
not seen in its most horrible light, unless we take into 
view, that the tyrant who committed it, had for many- 
years of her life, openly professed the Catholic reli- 
gion, and had, at her coronation, sworn that she firmly 
believed in that religion. 

343. In the enforcing of the horrible edicts, every 
insult that base minds could devise, was resorted to and 
in constant use. No Catholic, or reputed Catholic, had 
a moment's security or peace. At all hours, but gene- 
rally in the night time, the ruffians entered his house 
by breaking it open; rushed, in different divisions, into 
the rooms; broke open closets, chests, and drawers; 
rummaged beds and pockets; in short, searched every 
place and thing for priests, books, crosses, vestments, 
or any person or thing appertaining to the Catholic wor- 
ship. In order to pay the fines, gentlemen were com- 
pelled to sell their estates piece by piece; when they 
were in arrear, the tyrant was, by law, authorised to 
seize all their personal property, and two-thirds of 
their real estate every six months; and they were in 
some cases suffered, as a great indulgence, to%ay an 
annual composition for the liberty of abstaining from 
what they deemed- apostacy and blasphemy. Yet, 
whenever she took it into her suspicious head that her 
life was in danger, from whatever cause, and causes, 
and just causes enough there always were, she had no 
consideration for them on account of the fines or the 
composition. She imprisoned them, either in jail, or in 
the houses of Protestants, kept them banished from 
their own homes for years. The Catholic gentleman's 
own house afforded him no security; the indiscretion of 
children or friends, the malice of enemies, the dishones- 
ty or revenge of tenants or servants, the hasty conclu- 
sions of false suspicion, the deadly wickedness of those 
ready to commit perjury for gain's sake, the rapacity 
and corruption of constables, sheriffs, and magistrates, 
the virulent prejudice of fanaticism; to every passion 
hostile to justice, happiness, and peace; to every evil 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 237 

against which it is the object of just laws to protect a 
man, the conscientious Catholic gentleman lived con- 
tinually exposed; and that, too, in that land which had 
become renowned throughout the world by those deeds 
of valour and those laws of freedom which had been 
performed and framed by his Catholic ancestors. 

344. As to the poor conscientious " recusants" that 
is to say, keepers away from the tyrant's church, they, 
who had no money to pay fines with, were crammed into 
prison, until the gaols could (which was very soon,) 
hold no more, and until the counties petitioned to be re- 
lieved from the charge of keeping them. They were 
then discharged, being first publicly ivhipped, or having 
their ears bored with a hot iron. This not answering the 
purpose, an act was passed to compel all " recusants" 
not worth twenty marks a year, to quit the country in 
three months after conviction, and to punish them with 
death, in case of their return. The old "good Bess" 
defeated herself here; for it was found impossible to 
cause the law to be executed, in spite of all her menaces 
against the justices and sheriffs, who could not be 
brought up to her standard of ferociousness; and they, 
therefore, in order to punish the poor Catholics, levied 
sums on them at their pleasure, as a composition for the 
crime of abstaining from apostacy and profanation. 

345. The Catholics, at one time, entertained a hope, 
that, by a declaration of their loyalty, they should ob- 
tain from the Queen some mitigation, at least, of their 
sufferings. With this view they drew up a very able 
and most dutiful petition, containing an expression of 
their principles, their sufferings, and their prayers. 
Alas! they appealed to her to whom truth and justice 
and t mercy were all alike wholly unknown. The peti- 
tion being prepared, all trembled at the thought of the 
danger of presenting it to her. At last, Richard 
Shelley, of Michael Grove, Sussex, assumed the 
perilous charge. She had the (as it would have been 
in any other human being) incomparable baseness to re- 
fer him, for an answer, to the gloomy echoes of a pes- 
tiferous prison, where he expired, a victim to his own 
virtue and to her implacable cruelty. 



23S PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

346. Talk of Catholic tyrants! Talk of the Catholic* 
having propagated their faith by acts of force and cruelty! 
I wonder, that an English Protestant, even one whose 
very bread comes from the spoliation of the Catholics, 
can be found with so little shame as to talk thus. Our 
lying Protestant historians tell us, that the ships of the 
Spanish Armada were " loaded with RACKS," to be 
used upon the bodies of the English, who were pre- 
served from these by the wisdom and valour of " good 
and glorious Queen Bess." In the first place, it was the 
storm, and not " glorious Bess" that prevented an inva- 
sion of the country; and in the next place, the Spaniards 
might have saved themselves the trouble of importing 
RACKS, seeing that gentle Betsy had always plenty of 
them, which she kept in excellent order, and in almost 
daily use. It is to inflict most painful feelings on Pro- 
testants, to be sure- but, justice demands, that I describe 
one or two of her instruments of torture; because in 
them we see some of the most powerful of those means 
which she made use of for ESTABLISHING HER 
PROTESTANT CHURCH; and here I thank Dr. 
Lingard for having in note Uof volume V. of his His- 
tory, enabled me to give this description. One kind of 
torture, which was called, " The Scavenger's Daughter, 
" was a broad hoop of iron, consisting of two parts, fas- 
" tened by a hinge. The prisoner was made to kneel 
" on the pavement and to contract himself into as small 
" a compass as he could. Then the executioner, kneel- 
" ing on his shoulders, and having introduced the hoop 
" under his legs, compressed the victim close together, 
"till he was able to fasten the feet and hands together 
" over the small of the back. The time allotted to this 
" kind of torture was an hour and a half, during which 
" time the blood gushed from the nostrils, and, some- 
" times from the hands and feet." There were several 
other kinds of arguments of conversion that gentle Bet- 
ty made use of to eradicate the " damnable errors" of 
popery; but, her great argument was, the RACK. 
u This was a large open frame of oak, raised three 
" feet from the ground. The prisoner was laid under 
" it, on his back, on the floor. His wrists and ancles 
" were attached by cords to two rollers at the ends of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 239 

" the frame: these were moved by levers in opposite 
" directions till the body rose to a level with the frame. 
" Questions were then put; and, if the answers did not 
" prove satisfactory, the sufferer was stretchi7ig more 
u and more till the bones started from their sockets." 

347. There, Protestants; there, revilersofihe Catho- 
lic religion: there are some of the means which " good 
Queen Bess" made use of to make her Church " estab- 
lished by law." Compare, oh! compare, if you have 
one particle of justice left in you; compare these means 
with the means made use of by those who introduced 
and established the Catholic Church! 

348. The other deeds and events of the reign of this 
ferocious woman are now of little interest, and indeed, 
do not belong to my subject; but, seeing that the pen- 
sioned poet, Jammy Thompson, in that sickly stuff of 
his, which no man of sense ever can endure after he 
gets to the age of twenty, has told us about " the glories 
of the maiden reign" it may not be amiss, before I take 
my ieaveof this " good" creature, to observe, that her 
" glories" consisted in having broken innumerable so- 
lemn treaties and compacts; in having been continually 
bribing rebel subjects to annoy their sovereigns; in ha- 
ving had a navy of freebooters; in having had an army 
of plunderers; in having bartered for a little money the 
important town of Calais; and in never having added 
even one single leaf of laurel to that ample branch which 
had, for ages, been seated on the brows of England: 
and that, as to her maiden virtues, Witaker, (a Protest- 
ant clergyman, mind,) says, that " her life was stained 
" with gross licentiousness, and she had many gallants, 
" while she called herself a maiden queen." Her lite, 
as he truly says, was a life of " mischief and of mise- 
ry ;" and, in her death, (which took place in the year 
1603, the 70th of her age and the 45th of her reign,) 
she did all the mischief that it remained in her 
power to do, by sulkiiy refusing to name her successor, 
and thus leaving to a people, whom she had been pil- 
laging and scourging for forty-five years, a probable 
civil war, as " a legacy of mischief after her death." 
Historians have been divided in opinion, as to which 
was the ivorst man that England ever produced, her fa- 



240 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ther, or Cranmer; but, all mankind must agree, that this 
was the worst woman that ever existed in England, or 
in the whole world, Jezabel herself not excepted. 



LETTER XII. 



Accession of James I. 

Horrid persecution of the Catholics. 

Gunpowder Plot. 

Charles I. qualified for the rank of Martyr. 

"Reformation'' the second, or " thorough God- 
ly Reformation." 

Charles II. The plots and ingratitude of his 
Reign. 

James II. His endeavours to introduce gene- 
ral toleration. 

Dawn of "GLORIOUS" Revolution. 



Kensington, SI st August, 1825. 
My Friends, 

349. In the foregoing Numbers, it has been proved, 
beyond all contradiction, that the " Reformation," as it 
is called, was " engendered in beastly lust, brought 
" forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed 
" by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood." There 
are persons who publish what they call answers to me; 
but these answers, (which I shall notice again before I 
have done,) all blink the main subject: they dwell upon 
what their authors assert to be errors in the Catholic re- 
ligion; this they do, indeed, without attempting to 
show, how that Protestant Religion, which has about 
forty different sects, each at open war with all the rest, 
can be free from error ; but, do they deny, that this 
new religion began in beastly lust, hypocrisy, and perfi- 
dy ; and do they deny, that it was established by plun- 
der, by tyranny, by axes, by gallowses, by gibbets and by 
racks? Do they face with a direct negative either of 
these important propositions? No: there are the facts 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 241 

"before them; there is the history; and, (which they 
cannot face with a negative,) there are the Jlcts of Par- 
liament, written in letters of blood, and some of these 
remaining in force, to trouble and torment the people 
and to endanger the State, even to the present day. 
What do these answerers do, then? Do they boldly 
assert, that beastly lust, hypocrisy, perfidy, that the 
practice of plunder, that the use of axes, gallowses, 
gibbets and racks, are good things, and outward signs 
of inward evangelical purity and grace? No: they give 
no answer at all upon these matters; but rail against the 
personal character of priests and cardinals and popes, 
and against rites and ceremonies and articles of faith 
and rules of discipline, matters with which I have never 
meddled, and which have very little to do with my sub- 
ject, my object, as the title of my work expresses, be- 
ing to " show, that the c Reformation' has impoverished 
" and degraded the main body of the people of Eng- 
" land and Ireland. 11 I have shown that this change of 
religion was brought about by some of the worst, if 
not some of the very worst, people, that ever breathed; 
I have shown that the means were such as human nature 
revolts at: so far I can receive no answer from men not 
prepared to deny the authenticity of the statute-book: 
it now remains for me to show, from the same sources, 
the impoverishing and degrading consequences of this 
change of religion, and that too, with regard to the na- 
tion as a whole, as well as with regard to the main 
body of the people. 

350. But, though we have now seen the Protestant 
religion established, completely established by the gib- 
bets, the racks, and the ripping- knives, I must, before I 
come to the impoverishing and degrading consequences, 
of which I have just spoken, and of which I shall pro- 
duce the most incontestable proofs; I must give an ac- 
count of the proceedings of the Reformation-people 
after they had established their system. The present 
Number will show us the Reformation producing a se- 
cond, and that, too, (as every generation is wiser than 
the preceding,) with vast improvements ; the first being 
only " a godly Reformation," while the second we shall 
find to be " a thorough godly" one. The next, (or 
21 



.242 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

thirteenth,) Number, will introduce to us a third Re- 
ibrmation, commonly called the " glorious" Reforma- 
tion, or revolution. The 14th Number will give us an 
account of events still greater; namely, the American. 
.Reformation, or revolution, and that of the French. 
All these we shall trace back to the first Reformation as 
clearly as any man can trace the branches of a tree 
back to its root. And, then, we shall, in the remaining 1 
Number, or Numbers, see the fruit in the immorality, 
crimes, poverty and degradation of the main body of 
the people. It will be curious to behold the American 
and French Reformations, or revolutions, playing back 
the principles of the English Reformation-people upon 
themselves; and, which is not less curious, and much 
more interesting, to see them force the Reformation-peo- 
ple begin to cease to torment the Catholics, whom they 
had been tormenting without mercy for more than two 
hundred years. 

351 . The " good and glorious and maiden" and rack- 
ing and ripping-up Betsy, who, amongst her other 
"godly" deeds, granted to her minions, to whom there 
was no longer church-plunder to give, monopolies of al- 
most all the necessaries of life, so that salt, for instance, 
which used to be about 2d. a bushel, was raised to 15s. 
or about seven pounds of our present money; the 
" maiden" Betsy, who had, as Whitaker says, expired 
in sulky silence as to her successor, and had thus left a 
probable civil war as a legacy of mischief, was, howev- 
er, peaceably succeeded by James I. that very child of 
whom poor Mary Stuart was pregnant, when his father, 
Henry Stuart, Earl of Darnley, and associates, mur^ 
dered Rizzio in her presence, as we have seen in para- 
graph 308, and which child, when he came to man's es- 
tate, was a Presbyterian, was generally a pensioner of 
Bess, abandoned his mother to Bess's wrath, and, 
amongst his first acts in England, took by the hand, 
confided in, and promoted, that Cecil, who was the 
son of the Old Cecil, who did, indeed inherit the great 
talents of his father, but who had also been, as all the 
World knew, the deadly enemy of this new king's unfor- 
tunate mother. 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 243 

352. James, like all the Stuarts, except the last, was 
at once prodigal and mean, conceited and foolish, ty- 
rannical and weak; but the staring feature of his char- 
acter was insincerity. It would be useless to dwell in 
the detail on the measures of this contemptible reign, 
the prodigalities and debaucheries and silliness of which 
did, however, prepare the way for that rebellion and 
that revolution, which took place in the next, when the 
double-distilled " Reformers" did, at last, provide a 
" martyr''' for the hitherto naked pages of the Protest- 
ant Calendar. Indeed, this reign would, as far as my 
purposes extend, be a complete blank, were it not for 
that u gunpowder plot" which alone has caused this 
Stuart to be remembered, and of which, seeing that it 
has been, and is yet, made a source of great and gene- 
ral delusion, I shall take much more notice than it 
would otherwise be entitled to. 

353. That there was a plot in 1605, (the second 
year after James came to the throne,) the object of 
which was to blow up the king and both Houses of 
Parliament on the first day of the session; that Catho- 
lics, and none but Catholics, were parties to this plot; 
that the conspirators were ready to execute the deed; 
and that they all avowed this to the last; are facts which 
no man has ever attempted to deny, any more than any 
man has attempted to deny that the parties to the Cato- 
street plot did really intend to cut off the heads of Sid- 
mouth and Castlereagh, which intention was openly 
avowed by these parties from first to last, to the officers 
who took them, to the judge who condemned them, 
and to the people who saw their heads severed from 
their body. 

354. But, as the Parliamentary Reformers in general 
were most falsely and basely accused of instigating to 
the commission of the last-mentioned intended act, so 
were the Catholics in general, and so are they to this 
day, not less falsely and less basely accused of instiga- 
ting to the intended act of 1605. But, as to the con- 
spirators themselves; as to the extent of their crime, are 
we wholly to leave out of our consideration the provo- 
cation they had received? To strike a man is an as- 
sault; to kill a man is murder; but, are striking and 



£44 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

killing always assault and murder? Oh, no; for we 
may justifiably assault and kill a robber or a house- 
breaker. The Protestant writers have asserted two 
things; first, that the Catholics in general instigated to, 
or approved of, the gunpowder plot; and second, that 
tlrs is a proof of the sanguinary principles of their re- 
ligion. As to the first, the contrary was fully and ju- 
dicially proved to be the fact; and, as to the second, 
supposing the conspirators to have had provocation, 
those of Cato-street were not Catholics at any rate, nor 
were those Catholics who qualified Charles I. for a post 
in the Calendar, and that, too, observe, after he had ac- 
knowledged his errors, and had made compensation to 
the utmost of bis power. 

3 : 5. However, these conspirators had no provocation: 
and now let us see what that provocation was. The 
king, before he came to the throne, had promised to 
mitigate the penal laws, which, as we have seen, made 
their lives a burden. Instead of this, those laws were* 
rendered even more severe than they had been in the 
former reign. Every species of insult as well as injury 
which the Catholics had had to endure under the perse- 
cutions of the established church was now heightened by 
that leaven of Presbyterian malignity and ferocity, whick 
England had now imported from the North, which 
had then poured forth upon this devoted country end- 
less hordes of the most greedy and rapacious and inso- 
lent wretches that God had ever permitted to infest 
and scourge the earth. We have seen, in paragraphs 
340, 341, 342, 343, how the houses of conscientious 
Catholic gentlemen were rifled, how they were rum- 
maged, in what constant dread these unhappy men 
lived, how they were robbed of their estates as a 
punishment for recusancy and other things called crimes: 
we have seen, that, by the fines, imposed on these ac* 
counts, the ancient gentry of England, whose families 
had, for ages inhabited the same mansions and had been 
venerated and beloved for their hospitality and charity ; 
we have seen how all these were gradually sinking in- 
to absolute beggary in consequence of these exorbitant 
extortions: but, what was their lot now! The fines, as 
had been the practice, had been suffered to fall in tfr- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 245 

vear, m order to make the fined party more completely 
at the mercy of the crown; and James, whose prodi- 
gality left him not the means of gratifying the greedi- 
ness of his Scotch minions out of his own exchequer, 
delivered over the English Catholic gentry to these rapa- 
cious minions, who, thus clad with royal authority, fell, 
with all their well-known hardness of heart, upon the 
devoted victims, as the kite falls upon the defenceless 
dove. They entered their mansions, ransacked their 
closets, drawers and beds, seized their rent-rolls, in 
numerous instances drove their wives and children 
from their doors, and, with all their native upstart inso- 
lence, made a mockery of the ruin and misery of the 
unoffending persons whom they had despoiled. 

356. Human nature gave the lie to all preachings of 
longer passive obedience, and, at last, one of these op- 
pressed and insulted English gentlemen, Robert Cates- 
by, of Northamptonshire, resolved on making an at- 
tempt to deliver himself and his suffering brethren 
from this almost infernal scourge. But how was he 
to obtain the means? From abroad, such was the state 
of things, no aid could possibly be hoped for. Internal 
insurrection was, as long as the makers and executors 
of the barbarous laws remained, equally hopeless. 
Hence he came to the conclusion, that to destroy the 
"whole of them afforded the only hope of deliverance; 
and to effect this there appeared to him no other way 
than that of blowing up the parliament-house when, on 
the first day of the session, all should be assembled to- 
gether. He soon obtained associates; but, in the 
whole, they amounted to only about thirteen; and, all 
except three or four, in rather obscure situations in life ? 
amongst whom was Guy Fawkes, a Yorkshireman 
who had served as an officer in the Flemish wars. He 
it was, who undertook to set fire to the magazine, con- 
sisting of two hogsheads and thirty-two barrels of gun- 
powder; he it was, who, if not otherwise to be accom-, 
plished had resolved to blow himself up along with the 
persecutors of his brethren; he it was, who, on the. 
5th of November, 1605, a few hours only before the 
.Parliament was to meet, wes seized in the vault, with 
two matches in his pocket and a dark lantern by his 
.21* 



£4G PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

side, ready to effect his tremendous purpose; he it 
was, who, when brought before the King and Council, 
replied to all their questions with defiance; he it was, 
who, when asked by a Scotch Lord of the Council, 
why he had collected so many barrels of gunpowder, 
answered, •' to blow you Scotch beggars back to your na- 
tive mountains" and in this answer, proclaimed to the 
world the true immediate cause of this memorable con- 
spiracy; an answer, which, in common justice, ought 
to be put in to the mouth of those effigies of him, 
which crafty knaves induce foolish boys still to burn on 
the 5th of November, James, (whose silly conceit 
made him an author^) was just, in one respect, at any 
rate. In his works, he calls Fawkes, " the English 
Scjevola;" and history tells us that that famous Ro- 
man, having missed his mark in endeavouring to kill a 
tyrant, who had doomed his country to slavery, thrust 
his offending hand into a hot fire, and let it burn, while 
he looked defiance at the tyrant. 

357. Catesby and the other conspirators were pur- 
sued, he and three of his associates died with arms in 
their hands fighting against their pursuers. The rest 
of them, (except Thresham, who was poisoned in pri- 
son,) were executed, and also the famous Jesuit Gar- 
net, who was wholly innocent of any crime connected 
with the conspiracy, and who having come to a know- 
ledge of it through the channel of confession, had, on the 
contrary, done every thing in his power to prevent the 
perpetrating of its object. He was sacrificed to that un- 
relenting fanaticism, which, encouraged by this and other 
similar successes, at last, as we are soon to see, cut off 
the head of the son and successor of this very King. The 
King and Parliament escaped from feelings of humanity 
in the conspirators. Amongst the disabilities imposed on 
the Catholics, they had not yet, and were not until the 
reign of Charles II. shut out of Parliament. So that, if 
the House were blown up, Catholics, Peers and Mem- 
bers, would have shared the fate of the Protestants. — 
The conspirators could not give warning to the Catholics 
without exciting suspicions. They did give such warn- 
ing where they could ; and this led to the timely detec- 
tion: otherwise the whole of the two Houses, and tfte 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 241 

King: along with them, would have been blown to atoms; 
for "though Cecil evidently knew of the plot long be- 
fore the time of intended execution; though he took 
care to nurse it till the moment of advantageous disco- 
very arrived*, though he was, in all probability, the au- 
thor of a warning letter, which being sent anonymous- 
ly to a Catholic nobleman, and communicated by him to 
the Government, became the ostensible cause of the time- 
ly discovery; notwithstanding these well attested facts, it 
by no means appears, that the plot originated with him fl 
or, indeed, with any body butCATESBY, of whose con- 
duct men will judge differentlj according to the differ- 
ence in their notion about pass.ve obedience and non-re- 
sistance. 

358. This would be enougi of the famous gunpow- 
er plot; but, since it has been ascribed to bloody-mind- 
ed ness, as the natural fruit (f the Catholic religion ; 
since, in our COMMON-PEAYER BOOK, we are 
taught in addressing God, to tall all Catholics indiscri- 
minately, " our cruel and blocd-thirsty enemies" let us 
see a little what Protestants have attempted, and done, 
m this blowing-up way. This King James, as he him- 
self averred, was nearly biing assassinated by his 
Scotch Protestant subjects, Eirl Gowry and his asso- 
ciates; and, after that, narrowy escaped being blown up 
with all his attendants, by thefurious Protestants burgh- 
ers of Perth. See Collier': Church History, Vol. II. 
p. 663 and 664. Then agah, the Protestants in the 
Netherlands, formed a plot tc blow up their governor, 
the Prince of Parma, with al the nobility and magis- 
trates of those countries, whei assembled in the city of 
.Antwerp. But the Protestans did not always fail in 
their plots, nor were those vho engaged in them ob- 
scure individuals. For, as w« have seen in paragraph 
309, this very King James's fither, the King of Scot- 
land, was, in 1567, blown up bf gunpowder and thereby 
killed. This was doing the thiig effectually. Here was 
no warning given to any body; aid all the attendants and 
servants, of whatever religion and of both sexes, ex- 
cept such as escaped by mere accident, were remorse- 
lessly murdered along with their master. And who 
was this done by? By " blood-thirsty Catholics t :% No: 



248 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 



but by the lovers of the " Avangel" as the wretches 
called themselves; the followers of that Knox, to whom 
a monument has just becjn erected, or is now erecting at 
Glasgow. The conspirators, on this occasion, were 
not thirteen obscure m^n, and those, too, who had re- 
ceived provation enough to make men mad; but a body 
of noblemen and gentlemen, who really had received 
no provocation at all fipm Mary Stuart, to destroy 
whom was more the object than it was to destroy her 
husband. Let us take tie account of these conspira- 
tors in the words of WiJitaker; and, let the reader re- 
collect, that Whitaker. who published his book in 
1790, was a parson of tie Church of England, Rector 
of Ruhan-L any home ir Cornwall, and that he was 
amongst those clergymen 1 who was most strenuously op- 
posed to the rites and ceremonies, and tenets of the Ca- 
tholic Church: but he wis a truly honest man, a most 
zealous lover of truth anl hater of injustice. Hear this 
staunch Church-Parson, hen, upon the subject of this 
Protestant Gun-Powder- ?lo.t, concerning which he had 
made the fullest inquiry a id collected together the clear- 
est evidence. He, (Viraication of Mary, Queen of 
Scots, vol. iii. p. 235,) says, in speaking of the Plot, 
" The guilt of this wrebhed woman, Elizabeth, and 
"the guilt of that wretdied man, Cecil, appear too 
"evident, at last, upon tie face of the whole. Indeed, 
" as far as we can judge )f the matter, the whole dispo- 
" sition of the rnurderoui drama was this. The whole 
" originally planned and jevised betwixt Elizabeth, Ce- 
" cil, Morton, and Murny ; and the execution commit- 
ted to Lethington, Boti well, and Balfour; and Eliza- 
" beth, we may be certtin, was to defend the original 
" and more iniquitous pdrt of the conspirators, Morton 
" and Murray, in chargim their own murder upon the in- 
" nocent Mary" Did hel itself, did the devil, who was, 
as Luther himself says, so long the companion and so 
often the bed-fellow of fhis first " Reformer," ever de- 
vise wickedness equal ^b this Protestant plot? Let us 
hear no more, then, abjnit the blood-thirstiness of the 
Catholic religion; and, if we must still have our 5th of 
November, let the " moral" disciples of Knox, the in- 
habitants of "Modern Athens," have their 10th of Fc- 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 249 

bruary. Let them, too, (for it was Protestants that did 
the deed,) have their SOth of January, the anniversary 
of the killing of the son of this same king- James. Nobo- 
dy knew better than James himself the history of his fa- 
ther's and his mother's end. He knew that they had both 
been murdered by Protestants, and that, too, with circum- 
stances of atrocity quite unequalled in the annals of hu- 
man infamy; and therefore he himself was not for vigor- 
ous measures against the Catholics in general, on ac- 
count of the plot; but love of plunder in his minions 
prevailed over him; and now began to blaze, with fresh 
fury, that Protestant reformation spirit, which, at last, 
gave him a murdered son and successor, as it had alrea- 
dy given him a murdered father and mother. 

359. Charles I. who came to the throne on the death 
of his father, in 1625, with no more/ sense and with a 
stronger tincture of haughtiness and tyranny than his 
father, seemed to wish to go back, in Church matters, 
towards the Catholic rites and ceremonies, while his 
parliaments and people were gyqyj day becoming more 
and more puritanical. Divers were the grounds of 
quarrel between them, but the great ground was that of 
religion. The Catholics were suffering all the while, 
and especially those in Ireland, who were plundered and 
murdered by whole districts, and especially under 
Wentworth, who committed more injustice than ever 
had before been committed even in that unhappy coun- 
try. But all this was not enough to satisfy the puritans; 
and Laud, the primate of the Established Church, hav- 
ing done a great-many things to exalt that church in point 
of power and dignity, the purer Protestants called for 
" another Reformation" and what they called "a tho- 
rough godly Reformation." 

360. Now, then, this Protestant church and Protest* 
ant king had to learn that " Reformations," like comets, 
have tails. There was no longer the iron police of 
Old Bess, to watch and to crush all gain sayers. The 
puritans artfully connected political grievances, which 
were real and numerous, with religious principles and 
ceremonies; and, having the main body of the people 
■with them as to the former, while these were, in conse- 
quence of the endless change of creeds, become iadif* 



250 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

ferent as to the latter, they soon became, under the name 
of u The Parliament ," the sole rulers of the country, they 
a ' shed the Church and the House of Lords, and, finally 
brought in 1649, during the progress of their u tho- 
rough godly reformation," the unfortunate king himself 
to trial and to the block! 

361. All very bad to be sure; but all very natural, 
seeing what had gone before. If " some such man as 
Henry VIII." were, as Burnet says he were, necessa- 
ry to begin a " Reformation," why not " some such 
man" as Cromwell to complete it? If it were right to 
put to death More, Fisher, and thousands of others, nut 
forgetting the grand mother of Charles, on a charge of 
treason, why was Charles's head to be so very sacred? 
If it were right to confiscate the estates of the monas- 
teries, and to turn adrift, or put to death, the abbots, pri- 
ors, monks, friars, aud nuns, after having plundered the 
latter of even the ear-rings and silver thimbles, could it 
be so very wrong to take away merely the titles of those 
who possessed the plundered property? And, as to the 
Protestant Church, if it were right to establish it on the ru- 
ins of the ancient Church, by German bayonents, by fines, 
gallowses and racks, could it be so very wrong to estab- 
lish another newer one on its ruins, by means a great deal 
milder? If, at the time we are now speaking of, one 
of "good Bess's" parsons, who had ousted a priest of 
Queen Mary, had been alive, and had been made to fly 
out of his parsonage-house, not with one of Bess's bay- 
onets at his back, but on the easy toe of one of Crom- 
well's godly, bible-reading soldiers, could that parson 
have reasonably complained ! 

362. Cromwell, (whose reign we may consider as 
having lasted from 1649 to 1659,) therefore, though he 
soon made the Parli anient a mere instrument in his 
hands; though he was tyrannical and bloody; though he 
ruled with a rod of iron; though he was a real tyrant, 
was nothing more than the " natural issue" as " maid- 
en" Betsy w T ould have called him, of the "body" of the 
"Reformation." He was cruel towards the Irish; he 
killed them without mercy; but, except in the act of 
selling 20,000 of them to the West Indies as slaves, in 
what did he treat them worse than Charles, to whom 



JPROTESTAKT REFORMATION. 251 

and to whose descendants, they were loyal from first to 
last? And, certainly, even that sale did not equal in 
point of atrociousness, many of the acts committed 
against them during the three last Protestant reigns; 
and, in point of odiousness and hatefulness, it fell far 
short of the ingratitude of the Established Church in 
the reign of Charles II. 

363. But, common justice forbids us to dismiss the 
Cromweliian reign in this summary way; for, we are 
now to behold " Reformation" the second, which its 
authors and executors called " a thorough, godly Reform* 
ation;" insisting that " Reformation" the first was but a 
half-finished affair, and that the " Church of England as 
by law established" was only a daughter of the " Old 
Whore of Babylon." This " Reformation proceeded 
just like the former: its main object was plunder. The 
remaining property of the Church was now, as far as 
time and other circumstances would allow, confiscated 
and shared out amongst the u Reformers," who, if they 
had had time, would have resumed all the former plun- 
der, (as they did part of it,) and have shared it out 
again! It was really good to see these "godly" per- 
sons ousting from the abbey-lands, the descendants of 
those who had got them in " Reformation" the first; 
and, it was particularly good to hear the Church-bish- 
ops and parsons crying "sacrilege" when turned out of 
their palaces and parsonage-houses; aye, they, who 
and whose Protestant predecessors had, all their lives 
long, been justifying the ousting of the Catholic bish- 
ops and priests, who held them by prescription, and ex- 
pressly by Magna Charta. 

364. As if to make " Reformation" the second as 
much as possible like " Reformation" the first, there 
was now a change of religion made by laymen only; 
the Church-clergy were calumniated just as the Catho- 
lic clergy had been; the bishops were shutout of Par- 
liament as the abbots and Catholic bishops had been; 
the cathedrals and churches were again ransacked; 
Cranmer's tables, (put in place of the altars,) were now 
knocked to pieces; there was a general crusade against 
crosses, portraits of Chrjst, religious pictures, paintings 
on church windows, images on the outsides of cathe- 



252 PROTESTANT REFORMATION* 

drals, tombs in these and the churches. As the mass- 
books had been destroyed in " Reformation" the first, 
the church-books were destroyed in u Reformation" 
the second, and a new book, called the " Directory," 
ordered to be used in its place, a step which was no 
more than an imitation of Henry VHlth's " Christian 
Man" and Cranmer's " Prayer Book." And, why not 
this "Directory?" If the mass-book, of nine hun- 
dred years' standing, and approved of by all the peo- 
ple, could be destroyed, surely, the Prayer-Book, of 
only one hundred years' standing; and never approved 
of by one-half of the people, might also be destroyed. 
If it were quite right to put the former down, and that, 
too, as we have seen in paragraph 2 L2 ,with the aid of 
the sword, wielded by German troops, it might natu- 
rally enough be thought, that it could not be very 
wrong to put the latter down with the aid of the sword, 
wielded by English troops, unless, indeed, there were, 
which we have not been told, something p:culiarly 
agreeable to Englishmen, in the cut of German steel. 

365. It was a pair of " Reformations," as much alike 
as any mother and daughter ever were. The mother 
had a Cromwell, (see paragraph 157,) as one of the 
chief agents in her work, and the daughter had a 
Cromwell, the only difference in the two being, that 
one was a Thomas and the other an Oliver; the form- 
er Cromwell was commissioned to make " a godly re- 
formation of errors, heresies and abuses in the church;" 
and the latter was commissioned to make " a thoroughly 
godly reformation in the church;" the former Crom- 
well confiscated, pillaged and sacked the Church, and 
just the same did the latter Cromwell, except that the 
latter did not, at the same time, rob ilte poor, as the 
former had done; and, which seems a just distinction, 
the latter died in his bed, and the former, when the ty- 
rant wanted his services no longer, died on a scaffold. 

366. The heroes of " Reformation" the second were 
great 2?ifcZe-readers, and almost every man became, at 
times, a preacher. The soldiers were uncommonly 
gifted in this way, and they claimed a right to preach 
as one of the conditions upon which they bore a. as 
against the king. Every one interpreted the Bible in 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 253 

his own way; they were all for the Bible without note 
or comment. Roger North, (a Protestant,) in his 
4t Examen" gives an account of all sorts of blasphe- 
mies and of horrors committed by these people, who had 
poisoned the minds of nearly the whole of the commu- 
nity. Hence all sorts of monstrous crimes. At Dover 
a woman cut off the head of her child, alleging that, like 
Abraham she had a particular command from God. A 
woman was executed at York, for crucifying her mother. 
She had, at the same time, sacrificed a calf and cock. 
These are only amongst the horrors of that " thorough 
godly Reformation;" only a specimen, And why not 
these horrors? We read of killings in the Bible; and, 
if every man be to be his own interpreter of that book, 
who is to say that he acts contrary to his own interpre- 
tation? Why not all these new and monstrous sects? 
If there could be one new religion, one new creed 
made, why not a thousand? What right had Luther to 
make a new religion, and then Calvin another new one, 
and Cranmer one differing from both these, and then 
u good Bess" to make an improvement upon Cranmer's? 
Were all these to make new religions, and were the en- 
lightened soldiers of Cromwell's army to be deprived 
of this right? The former all alleged, as their authori- 
ty, the " inspiration of the Holy Ghost?'' What, then, 
were Cromwell and his soldiers to be deprived of the 
benefit of this allegation! Poor " godly" fellows, why 
were they to be the only people in the world not quali- 
fied for choosing a religion for themselves, and for those 
whom they had at the point of their bayonets? One of 
Cromwell's "godly" soldiers went, as North relates, 
into the church of Walton-upon-Thames, with a lan- 
thorn and five candles, telling the people that he had a 
message to them from God, and that they would be 
damned if they did not listen to him. He put out one 
light as a mark of the abolition of the sabbath; the 
second, as a mark of the abolition of all tithes and 
church dues; the third as a mark of the abolition of all 
ministers and magistrates; and then the fifth light he 
applied to setting fire to a Bible, declaring that that al- 
so was abolished! These were pretty pranks to play; 
but, they were the natural, the inevitable, consequence 
of " Reformation" the first. 
%% 



254 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

367. In one respect, however, thece new reformers 
differed from the old ones. They did, indeed, make a 
new religion, and command people to follow it, and 
they inflicted punishments on the refractory; but, those 
punishments were beds of down compared with oak 
planks, when viewed by the side of those inflicted by 
" good Bess" and her Church. They forbade the use 
of the Common-Prayer-Book in all churches and also 
in private families; but, they punished the disobedient 
with a penalty of Jive pounds for the first offence, ten 
pounds for the second, and with three years' imprison- 
mem for the third; and did not hang them and rip out 
their boivels, as the Church of England sovereigns had 
done by those who said or heard mass. Bad as these 
fanatics were, wicked and outrageous as were their 
deeds, they never persecuted, nor attempted to perse- 
cute, with a hundredth part of the cruelty that the 
Church of England had done; aye, and that it did again 
the moment that it regained its power, after the resto- 
ration of Charles II. when it became more cruel to the 
Catholics even than it had been in the reign of " good 
Queen Bess;" and that too, notwithstanding that the Ca- 
tholics of all ranks and degrees, had signalized them- 
selves, during the civil war, in every way in which it 
was possible for them to aid the royal cause. 

368. This, at first sight seems out of nature; but if 
we consider, that this Church of England felt con- 
scious, that its possessions did once belong to the Ca- 
tholics, that the Cathedrals and Churches and the Col- 
leges, were all the work of Catholic piety, learning and 
disinterestedness; when we consider this, can we be 
surprised that these new possessors, who had got pos- 
session by such means, too, as we have seen in the 
course of this work; when we consider this, are we to 
be surprised, that they should do every thing in their 
power to prevent the people from seeing, hearing, and 
contracting a respect for those whom these new pos- 
sessors had ousted? Here we have the true cause of 
all the hostility of the Church of England Clergy to- 
wards the Catholics. Take away the possessions, and 
the hostility would cease to-morrow; though there is, 
besides that, a wide, and, on their side, a very disad- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 255 

vantageous difference, between a married clergy, and 
one not married. The former will never have an influ- 
ence with the people, any thing like approaching that 
of the latter. There is, too, the well-known superiori- 
ty of learning on the side of the Catholic clergy; to 
which may be added the notorious fact, that, in fair 
controversy, the Catholics have always triumphed. 
Hence the deep-rooted, the inflexible, the persevering 
and absolutely implacable hostility of this Established 
Church to the Catholics; not as men, but as Catholics. 
To what else are we to ascribe, that, to this day, the 
Catholics are forbidden to have steeples or bells to their 
chapels? They, whose religion gave us our steeples 
and our bells! To what else are we to ascribe, that 
4 heir priests are, even now, forbidden to appear in the 
streets, or in private houses, in their clerical habiliments, 
and even when [they go J to perform their functions at 
funerals? Why all this anxious pains to keep the Ca- 
tholic religion out of sight f Men may pretend what 
they will, but these pains argue any thing but conscious- 
ness of being right, on the part of those who take those 
pains. Why, when the -English nuns came over to 
England, during the French Revolution, and settled at 
Winchester, get a Bill brought into Parliament, (as the 
Church clergy did,) to prevent them from taking Pro- 
testant scholars, and give up the Bill only upon a pro- 
mise that they would not take such scholars? Did this 
argue a conviction in the minds of the Winchester 
Parsons, that Bishop North's was the true religion, and 
that William of Wickham ? s was the false one. The 
Church parsons are tolerant enough towards the sects 
of all descriptions: quite love the Quaker, who rejects 
baptism and the sacrament; shake hands with the Uni- 
tarian, and allow him openly to impugn that, which 
they tell us in the Prayer Book, a man cannot be saved 
if he do not firmly believe in; suffer these, aye, and 
even JEWS, to present to church livings, and refuse that 
right to Catholics, from whose religion all the church- 
livings came! 

369. Who, then, can doubt of the motive of this im- 
placable hostility, this everlasting watchfulness, this 
rancorous jealousy that never sleeps? The common 



25$ PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

enemy being put down by the restoration of Charles, 
the Church fell upon the Catholics with more fury than 
ever. This king, who came out of exile to mount the 
throne in 1660, with still more prodigality than either 
his father or grandfather, had a great deal more sense 
than both put together, and, in spite of all his well- 
known profligacy, he was, on account of his popular 
manners, a favourite with his people; hut, he was strong- 
ly suspected to be a Catholic in his heart, and his more 
honest brother, James, his presumptive heir, was an 
openly declared Catholic. Hence the reign of Charles 
II. was one continued series of plots, sham or real; and 
one unbroken scene of acts of injustice, fraud, and false- 
swearing. These were plots ascribed to the Catholics, 
but really plots against them. Even the great five in 
London, which took place during this reign, was as- 
cribed to them, and there is the charge, to this day, 
going round the base of " the Monument" which Pope 
justly compares to a big, lying bully. 

" Where London's column, pointing to the skies, 
" Like a tall bully, lifts its head, and lies." 

The words are these: " This monument is erected m 
u memory of the burning of this Protestant city, by the 
" Popish faction, in Sept. A. D. 1666, for the destruc- 
tion of the Protestant religion, and of old English 
" liberty , and for the introduction of Popery and slavery, 
:t But the fury of the Papists is not yet satisfied." It 
is curious enough, that this inscription was made by or- 
der of Sir Patience Ward, who, as Echard shows, 
was afterwards convicted of perjury. Burnet, (whom 
we shall find in full tide by-and-by,) says, that one 
Hubert, a French papist, " confessed that he began the 
fire;" but Higgons, (a Protestant, mind,) proves that 
Hubert was a Protestant, and Rapin agrees with Hig- 
gons! Nobody knew better than the King the mon- 
strousness of this lie; but Charles II. was alazy,.lux- 
urious debauchee. Such men have always been un- 
feeling and ungrateful ; and this King, who had twice 
owed his life to Catholic priests, and who had, in fifty- 
two instances held his life at the mercy of Catholics > 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 257 

(some of them very poor,) while he was a wandering- 
fugitive, with immense rewards held out for taking him, 
and dreadful punishments for concealing him; this profli- 
gate king, whose ingratitude to his faithful Irish sub- 
jects is without a parallel in the annals of that black 
sin, had the meanness and injustice to suffer this lying 
inscription to stand. It was effaced by his brother and 
successor; but, when the Dutchman and the "glorious 
revolution" came, it was restored; and there it now 
stands, all the world, except the mere mob, knowing it 
to contain a most malignant lie. 

370. By conduct like this, by thus encouraging the 
fanatical part of his subjects in their wicked designs, 
Charles II. prepared the way for those events by which 
his family were excluded from the throne for ever. To 
set aside his brother, who was an avowed Catholic, was 
their great object. This was, indeed, a monstrous at- 
tempt; but, legally considered, what was it more than 
to prefer the illegitimate Elizabeth to the legitimate 
Mary Stuart? What was it more, than to enact, that 
any " natural is$ue n of the former should be heir to the 
throne? And, how could the Protestant Church com- 
plain of it, when its great maker, Cranmer, had done 
his best to set aside both the daughters of Henry VIII. 
and to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne? In short, 
there was no precedent for annulling the rights of in- 
heritance, for setting aside prescription, for disregard- 
ing the safety of property and of person, for violating 
the fundamental laws of the kingdom, that the records 
of the "Reformation" did not amply furnish: and this 
daring attempt to set aside James on account of his re- 
ligion, might be truly said, as it was said, to be a Pro- 
testant principle; and it was, too, a principle most de- 
cidedly acted upon in a few years afterwards. 

371. James II. was sober, frugal in his expenses eco- 
nomical as to public matters, sparing of the people's pur- 
ses, pious and sincere; but weak and obstinate, and he 
was a Catholic, and his piety and sincerity made him 
not a match for his artful, numerous and deeply interested 
foes. If the existence of a few missionary priests in 
the country, though hidden behind wainscots, had call- 
ed fourth thousands of pursuivants, in order to protect 

22* 



25S PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

the Protestant Church; if to hear mass in a private house 
had been regarded as incompatible with the safety of 
that Church; what was to be the fate of that Church, if 
a Catholic king continued to sit on the throne? It was 
easy to see that the ministry, the army, the navy, and 
all the offices under the government, would soon contain 
few besides Catholics; and it was also easy to see that, 
by degrees, Catholics would be in the parsonages and in 
the episcopal palaces, especially as the king was as zea- 
lous as he was sincere. The " Reformation" had made 
consciences to be of so pliant a nature, men had' chang- 
ed, under it, backward and forward so many times, that 
this last, (the filling of the Church with Catholic priests 
and bishops,) would, perhaps, amongst the people in 
general, and particularly amongst the higher classes, 
have produced but little alarm. But, not so with the cler- 
gy themselves, who soon saw their danger, and who, 
" passive" as they were, lost no time in preparing to 
avert it. 

372. James acted as far as the law "would let him, 
and as far as prerogative would enable him to go be- 
yond the law, on principles of general toleration. By 
this he obtained the support of the sectaries. But the 
church had got the good things, and it resolved, if pos- 
sible, to keep them. Besides this, though the abbey 
lands and the rest of the real property of the Church 
and the poor, had been a long while in the peaceable 
possession of the then owners and their predecessors, 
the time was not so very distant but that able lawyers, 
having their opinions backed by a well-organized army, 
might still find a flaw in, here and there, a grant of Hen- 
ry VIII., Edward VI. and Old Betsy. Be their thoughts 
what they might, certain it is, that the most zealous and 
most conspicuous and most efficient of the leaders of the 
"Glorious Revolution" which took place soon afterwards, 
and which drove James from the throne, together with 
his heirs and his house, were amongst those whose an- 
cestors had not been out of the way at the time when 
sharing of the abbey lands took place. 

373. With motives so powerful against him, the king 
ought to have been uncommonly prudent and wary. He 
was just the contrary. He was severe towards all who 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 25$ 

opposed his views, however powerful they might be. 
Some bishops who presented a very insolent, but art- 
ful, petition to him, he sent to the Tower, had them pros- 
ecuted for a libel, and had the mortification to see them 
acquitted. As to the behaviour of the Catholics, pru- 
dence and moderation was not to be expected from them. 
Look at the fines, the burning irons, the racks, the gib- 
bets, and the ripping-knives of the late reigns, and say 
if it were not both natural and just, that their joy and 
exultation should now be without bounds. These were, 
alas! of short duration, for a plan, (we must not call it 
a plot,) having been formed for compelling the king to 
give up his tolerating projects, and " to settle the king- 
dom," as it was called, the planners, without any act of 
parliament, and without consulting the people in any 
way whatever, invited William, the Prince of Orange, 
who was the Stadtholder of the Dutch, to come over 
with a Dutch army to assist them in " settling" the king- 
dom. All things having been duly prepared, the Dutch 
guards , (who had been suffered to get from Torbay to 
London by perfidy in the English army,) having come to 
the hinges palace and thrusted out the English guards, 
the king having seen one "settling" of a sovereign, in 
the reign of his father, and, apparently, having no rel- 
ish for another settling of the same sort, fled from his 
palace and his kingdom, and took shelter in France, in- 
stead of fleeing to some distant English city and there 
rallying his people round him, which, if he had done, 
the event would, as the subseqent conduct of the people 
proved, have been very different from what it was. 

374. Now came, then, the " glorious Revolution," or 
Reformation the third; and, when we have taken a view 
of its progress and completion, we shall see how it, in 
its natural consequences, extorted, for the long-oppress- 
ed Catholics, that relief, which by appeals to the jus- 
tice and humanity of their persecutors, they had sought 
in vain for more than two hundred years, 




260 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

LETTER XIII. 

" Glorious" Revolution, or Reformation the 
Third. 

The Dutch Kino and his delivering Army. 

The "Crimes" of James II. with Elucidations. 

Parliamentary Purity. 

The Protestant Bishop Jocelyn. 

Sydney, and others of the Protestant Patri- 
ots. 

Habeas Corpus Act. 

Settlement of American Colonies. 



Kensington, Slst October, 1825. 
My Friends, 

375. At the close of the last Number, we saw a 
Dutchman invited over with an army to"se.tle" the 
kingdom; we saw the Dutch guards come to London 
and thrust out the English guards; we saw the King of 
England flee for his life, and take refuge in France, af- 
ter his own army had been seduced to abandon him. 
The stage being now clear for the actors in this affair, 
we have now to see how they went to work, the man- 
ner of which we shall find as summary and unceremo- 
nious as heart, however Protestant, could have possibly 
wished. 

376. The king heing gone, the Lord Mayor and Al- 
dermen of London, with a. parcel of Common Council- 
men, and such Lords and members of the late King 
Charles's Parliament as chose to join them, went, in 
February, 1 688, without any authority from King, Par- 
liament, or people, and forming themselves into u a 
Convention,'''' at Westminster, gave the Crown to Wil- 
liam, (who was a Dutchman,) and his wife, ( who was a 
daughter of James, but who had a brother alive) and 
their posterity FOR EVER; made new oaths of alle- 
giance for the people to take; enabled the new King to 
imprison, at pleasure, all whom he might suspect ; ban- 
ished, to ten miles from London, all Papists, or reputed 
Papists, and disarmed them all over the kingdom; gave 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 261 

ihe advowsons of Papists to the Universities; granted 
to their new Majesties excise duties, land taxes and 
poll-taxes for the " necessary defence of the realm;" de- 
clared themselves to be the " Two Houses of Parliament 
as legally as if they had been summoned according to the 
usual form:'''' and this they called a "glorious Revolu- 
tion," as we Protestants call it to this present day. Af- 
ter " Reformation" the second, and upon the restora- 
tion of Charles, the palaces and livings and other in- 
destructible plunder, was restored to those from whom 
the " thorough godly" had taken them, except, howev- 
er, to the Catholic Irish, who had fought for this King's 
father, who has suffered most cruelly for this King him- 
self, and who were left still to be plundered by the 
*' thorough godly," which is an instance of ingratitude 
such as, in no other case, has been witnessed in the 
world. However, there were, after the restoration, 
men enough to contend, that the episcopal palaces and 
other property, confiscated and granted away by the 
" thorough godly," ought not to be touched; for that if 
those grants be resumed, why not resume those of Henry 
VIII? Aye, why not indeed! Here was a question 
to put to the Church Clergy, and to the Abbey-Land 
owners! If nine hundred years of quiet possession, 
and Magna Charta at the back of it; if it were right to 
set these at nought for the sake of making only a a 
godly Reformation," why should not one hundred years 
of unquiet possession be set at nought for the sake of 
making "a thorough godly Reformation?" How did 
(he Church clergy answer this question? Why, Dr. 
Heylin, who was Rector of Alresford in Hampshire, 
and afterwards Dean of Westminster, who was a great 
enemy of the " thorough godly," though not much less 
an enemy of the Catholics, meets the question in this 
way, in the Address, at the head of his History of Re- 
formation the first, where he says, " that there certainly 
" must needs be a vast disproportion between such con- 
" tracts, as were founded upon acts of parliament, Ze- 
" gaily passed by the king's authority, with the consent. 
" and approbation of the three estates, and those which 
u have no other ground but the bare votes, and orders, 
u of both Houses only. By the same logic it might be 



2Q2 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" contended, that the two Houses alone have authority 
u to depose a king." 

377. This Church-Doctor died a little too soon ; or, 
he would have seen, not two Houses of Parliament, but 
a Lord Mayor of London, a parcel of Common Council- 
men, and such other persons as chose to join them actu- 
ally setting aside one King and putting another upon the 
throne, and without any authority from King, Par- 
liament, or people; he would have heard this called " a 
glorious" thing; and, if he had lived to our day, he 
would have seen other equally " glorious'''' things grow 
directly out of it ; and, that notwithstanding Black- 
stone had told the Americans, that a "glorious" revo- 
lution was a thing never to be repeated. Doctor Heylin 
would have heard them repeating, as applied to George 
III. almost word for word, the charges which the "glo- 
rious" people preferred against James II. though they ; 
naughty Yankees, knew perfectly Well, that, after the 
"glorious" affair, a King of England, (being a Protes* 
test,) could " do no wrong !". The Doctor's book, written 
to justify the u Reformation" did, as Pere Orleans tells 
us, convert James II. and his first wife to the Catholic re- 
ligion ; but his preface, above quoted, did not succeed 
so well with Protestants. 

378. We shall, in due time, see something of the 
COST of this "glorious" revolution to the people; but, 
first, seeing that this revolution and the exclusion acts 
which followed it were founded upon the principle, that 
the Catholic religion was incompatible with public free- 
dom and justice, let us see what things this Catholic King- 
had really done, and in what degree they were worse 
than things that had been and that have been done un- 
der Protestant sovereigns. As William and his Dutch 
army have been called our deliverers, let us see what it 
really was, after all, that they delivered the people from; 
and, here, happily, we have the Statue-book to refer to, 
in which there still stands the List of Charges, drawn 
up against this Catholic King. However, before we 
examine these charges, we ought, in common justice, to 
notice certain things that James did not, do. He did 
not, as Protestant Edward VI. had done, bring Ger- 
man troops into the country to enforce a change of re- 
ligion; nor did he, like that young Saint, burn his starv- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. g68 

ing subjects with a hot iron on the breast or on the fore- 
head and make them wear chains as slaves, as a punish- 
ment for endeavouring to relieve their hunger by beg- 
ging. He did not, as Protestant Betsy had done, 
make use of whips, boring irons, racks, gibbets, and 
ripping-knives, to convert people to his faith; nor did 
he impose even my fines for this purpose; but, on the con- 
trary, put, as far as he was able, an end to all persecution 
on account of religion: oh! but, I am forgetting: for this 
we shall find amongst his Catholic crimes : yes, amongst 
the proofs of his being a determined and intolerant Pop- 
ish tyrant! He did not as Protestant Betsy had 
done, give monopolies to his court-minions, so as to make 
salt, for instance, which, in his day, was about fourpence 
a bushel, fourteen founds a busiiel, and thus go on, till, 
at last, the Parliament feared, as they did in the time of 
"good Bess," chat there would be a monopoly even of 
brad. These were amongst the things, which, being 
piuely q[ Protestant birth, James, no doubt from "Ca- 
tholic bigotry" did not do. And now, let us come to 
the things, which he really did, or, at least, which he 
was charged with having done. 

379. Indictments do not generally come after judg- 
ment and execution; but, for some cause or other, the 
charges against James were postponed until the next 
year, when the crown had been actually given to the 
Dutchman and his wife. No matter: they came out at 
last; and there they stand, 12 in number, in Act, 2 Sess. 
Wm. and M. chap. 2. We will take them one by one, 
bearing in mind, that they contained all that could even 
be said against this Popish King. 

CHARGE I. "That he assumed and exercised a 
" power of dispensing with and suspending laws, and 
" the execution of laws without consent of Parliament." 
— That is to say, he did not enforce those cruel laws 
against conscientious Catholics, which had been enact- 
ed in former reigns. But, did not Betsey and her suc- 
cessor James I. dispense with, or suspend, laws, when 
they took a composition from recusants? Again, have 
we ourselves never seen any suspension of or dispensing 
with laws without consent of Parliament? Was there, 
and is there, no dispensing with the law, in employing 



§64 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

foreign officers in the English army, and in granting 
pensions from the crown to foreigners ? And was there 
no suspension of the law, wheu the Ba>:;k stopped pay- 
ment in 1797? And, did the parliament give its assent to 
the causing of that stoppage? And, has it ever given its 
assent to the putting of foreigners in offices of trust, civil 
or military, or to the granting of pensions from the 
crown to foreigners? But, did James ever suspend the 
Habeas Corpus Act? Did his Secretaries of State 
ever imprison whom they pleased, in any gaol or dun- 
geon that they pleased; or let the captives out when 
they pleased? Ah! but what he and his ministers did 
in this way, (if they did any thing,) was all done " with- 
out consent of Parliament;" and who is so destitute of 
discrimination as not to perceive the astonishing differ- 
ence between a dungeon with consent of Parliament and 
a dungeon without consent of Parliament! 

CHARGE II. " That he committed and prosecuted 
"divers worthy prelates, for humbly petitioning to be 
" excused from concurring to the said assumed powers." 
He prosecuted them as libellers, and they were acquit- 
ted. But he committed them, before trial and conviction; 
and, w r hy? because they refused to give bail. And they 
contended that it was tyranny in him to demand such 
bail ! Oh, heavens ! How many scores of persons have 
been imprisoned for a similar refusal, or for want of abili- 
ty to give bail on a charge of libel, during the last eight 
years ! Would not Mr. Clement have been imprisoned, 
the other day only, if he had refused to give bail, not on a 
charge of libel on a king upon his throne, but on a 
Protestant professor of humanity ? And, do not SIX 
ACTS, passed by a parliament, from which tyrannical 
Catholics are so effectually excluded, declare to us free 
Protestants, that this has always been the law of the 
land! And, is that all? Oh, no! For we may now r be 
banished for life, not only for libelling a king on his 
throne, but for uttering any thing that has a TEN- 
DENCY to bring either House of Parliament into con- 
tempt ! 

CHARGE HI. " That he issued a commission for 
"erecting a Court, called the Court of Commissioners 
u for Ecclesiastical Causes" Bless us! What! was 



PR0TESTA1ST REFORMATION. 265 

this worse than "good Betsy's" real inquisition, under 
thg same name? And, good God! have we no court of 
this sort now f And was not, (no longer than about 
nine months ago,) Sarah Wallis, (a labourer's wife 
of Hargrave in Norfolk,) for having " brawled'''' m the 
church-yard, sentenced by this court to pay 241. Qs. od. 
costs; and was she not sent to gaol for non-payment; 
mid must she not have rotted in gaol, having not a shil- 
ling in the world, if humane persons had not stepped 
forward to enable her to get out by the Insolvent Act? 
And, cannot this court now, agreeably to those of young 
Protestant Saint Edward's Acts, in virtue of which the 
above sentence was passed, condemn any one who at- 
tempts to fight in a church-yard, to have one ear cut off, 
and, if the offender " have no ears," (which speaks vo- 
lumes as to the state of the people under Protestant 
Edward,) then to he. burnt with a hot iron in the cheeky 
and to be excommunicated besides ? And, did not the 
revolution Protestants, who drew up the charges against 
James, leave this law in full force for our benefit? 

CHARGE IV. " That he levied money for and to 
" the use of the crown, by pretence of prerogative, 
u for other time and in other manner, than was granted 
"by Parliament." It is not pretended that he levied 
more money than was granted; but he was not exact as 
to the time and manner. Did the Parliament grant. 
Betsy the right to raise money by the sale of monopo- 
lies, by compositions with offenders, and by various 
other of her means? But did we not lately hear of the 
hyp duty payment being shifted from one year to another ? 
Doubtless, with wisdom and mercy; but I very much 
doubt of James's ever having, in this respect, deviated 
from strict law to a greater amount, seeing that his whole 
revenue did not exceed, (taking the difference in the value 
of money into account,) much above sixteen times the 
amount of a good year's hop duty. 

CHARGE V. " That he kept a standing army m 
time of peace without consent of Parliament." Ah? 
without consent of Parliament, indeed ! That was very 
wicked. There were only seven or eight thousand 
men, to be sure, and such a thing as a barrack had 
never been heard of, But, without consent of Parlw* 
23 



288 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

mentl Think of the vast difference between the prick 
of a bayonet coming without consent of Parliament, 
and that of one coming with such consent! Tkls 
king's father had been dethroned and his head had 
been cut off by an army kept up with consent of Par- 
Moment, mind that, however. Whether there were, in 
the time of James, any such affairs as that at Manches- 
ter, on the memorable 16th of August, 1819, history is 
quite silent; nor are we told, whether any of James's 
priests enjoyed military half-pay; nor are we inform- 
ed, whether he gave half-pay, or took it away, at his 
pleasure, and without any u consent of Parliament:" so 
that, as to these matters, we have no means of making 
a comparison. We are in the same situation with re- 
gard to foreign armies ; for we do not find any account 
whatever of James 's having brought any into England, 
and especially of his having caused foreign generals to 
command even the English troops, militia and all, in 
whole districts of England. 

CHARGE VI. " That he caused several good sub- 
ejects, being Protestants, to be disarmed, at the same 
"time that Papists were both armed and employed, 
"contrary to law." SIX ACTS disarmed enough of 
the king's subjects; aye, but, then, these were not 
"good" ones; they wanted a reform of the House of 
Commons. And besides, there was " law" for this. 
And, if people will not see what a surprising difference 
there is between being disarmed by law and disarmed 
by proclamation, it really is useless to spend valuable 
Protestant breath upon them. 

CHARGE VII. " That he violated the freedom of 
election of Members to serve in Parliament." Oh, 
-monstrous! Aye, and "notorious as the sun at noon- 
day!" Come up, shades of sainted Perceval and Cas- 
tlereagh; come voters of Sarum and Gatton; assemble, 
^*e sons of purity of election, living and dead, and con- 
demn this wicked king for having " violated the free- 
dom of elections!" But, come, we must not suffer this 
matter to pass off in the way of joke. Protestant 
reader, do you think, that this u violating of the free- 
dom of elections for Members to serve in Parliament" 
was a crime in King James? He is not accused of hav- 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 267 

ing done all these things with his own tongue, pen, or 
hands; but with having done them with the aid of" div- 
ers wicked ministers and councillors." Well; but do you, 
my Protestant readers, think that this violation of the 
freedom of elections was a bad thing, and a proof of the 
wicked principles of Popery ? If you do, take the fol- 
lowing facts, which ought to have a place in a work 
like this, which truth and honour and justice demand to 
be recorded, and which I state as briefly as I possibly 
catf. Know, then, and be it for ever remembered, That 
Catholics have been excluded from the throne for more 
than a hundred years. That they have been excluded 
from the English Parliament ever since the reign of 
Charles II., and from the Irish Parliament ever since 
the 22d year of George III. That, therefore, the throne 
and the Parliament were filled exclusively with Protest- 
ants in the year 1S09: That, in 1779, long and long 
after Catholics had been shutout of the English Parlia- 
ment, the House of Commons resolved, "That it is 
" HIGHLY CRIMINAL for any Minister or Minis- 
" iers, or any other servant of the crown in Great Bri- 
" tain, directly or indirectly, to make use of the power 
" of his office, in order to influence the election of Mem-' 
M bers of Parliament, and that an attempt to exercise 
"that influence is an attack upon the dignity, the honour 
" and the independence of Parliament, an infringement 
** of the rights and the liberties of the people, and an at- 
" tempt to sap the basis of out free and happy constitu- 
" tion." — That, in 1809, Lord Castlereagh, a Minister 
and a Privy Councillor, having been charged before the 
House with having had something to do about bar- 
tering a seat in the House, the Hoii3e on the 25th of 
April of that year, resolved, " That while it was tlie 
" bounden duty of that House to maintain at all times a 
"jealous guard upon its purity, and not to sutler any at- 
" tempt upon its privileges to pass unnoticed, the at- 
" tempt, in the present instance, (that of Lord Castle- 
<c reagh and Mr. Redding,) not having been carried into 
" effect, that house did not think it then necessary to pro- 
-" ceed to any criminating resolutions respecting the 
" same.' 1 — That on the 11th of May, 1809, (only six- 
$en days after this last resolution was passed,) Wij,- 



.268 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ham Madocks, Member for Boston, made a charge in 
the following words, to wit: U I affirm, then, that Mr. 
*' Dick purchased a seat in the House of Commons, for 
"the Borough of Cashe], through the agency of the Ho- 
nourable Henry Wellesley, who acted for, and on be- 
"half of, the Treasury; that, upon a recent question 
"of the last importance, when Mr. Dick had determin- 
ed to vote according to his conscience, the noble Lord, 
" Castlereagh, did intimate to that gentleman the ne- 
" cessity of either his voting icith the Government, or re- 
M signing his seat in that House; and that Mr. Dick soon- 
" er than vote against his principles, did make choice of 
" the latter alternative, and vacate his seat accordingly; 
" and that to this transaction, I charge the right honour- 
able gentieman, Mr. Perceval, as being privy, and 
" having connived at it. This I engage to prove by wit- 
*' nesses at your bar, if the House will give me leave to 
"call them." — That, having made his charge, Mr. 
Madocks made a motion for INQUIRY into the matter: 
That, after a debate, the question was put to the vote: 
That there were three hundred and ninety-five Mem- 
bers in the House, all Protestants, mind: — That, (come 
up and hear it, 'you accusers of James and the Catholic 
religion!) there were EIGHTY-FIVE for an inquiry, 
and^THREE HUNDRED AND TEN against it!— 
THAT, this same PROTESTANT Parliament, did, 
in 1819, on the MOTION OF THAT VERY SAME 
LORD CASTLEREAGH, pass a law by which any 
of us may now be BANISHED FOR LIFE for 
publishing any thing having a TENDENCY to bring 
THAT VERY HOUSE into CONTEMPT!— THAT 
this Lord Castlereagh was secretary of State 
for foreign affairs. THAT he continued to be the 
leading Minister in the House of Commons, (exclusive- 
ly Protestant,) until the close of the session of 1822, 
which took place on the 6th of August o,f that year. — 
THAT, on the 12th of that same month of August, he 
cut his own throat, and killed himself at North Cray, in 
Kent; that a coroner's jury declared him to have been 
insane, and that the evidence showed, that he had been 
insane for several weeks, though he had been the leader 
of the House up to the 6th of August, and though he 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 26 9 

was, at the moment when he killed himself, Secretary 
of State for foreign affairs, and also temporary Secretary 
for the Home Department and that of the colonies! — 
THAT his body was buried in Westminter Abbey- 
church, mourned over by his colleagues, and that, as it 
was taken out of the hearse, a great assemblage of the 
people gave loud and long-continued cheers of exulta- 
tion." 

CHARGE VIII. " That he promoted prosecutions 
\ l in the Court of King's Bench for matters and things 
" cognizable only in Parliament ; and that he did divers 
u other arbitrary and unlawful things." That is to say, 
that he brought before a jury matters which the Par- 
liament wished to keep to itself! Oh, naughty and ar- 
bitrary kingly to have jury -trial for the deeds of par- 
liament-men, instead of letting them try themselves ! As 
to the divers other such arbitrary things, they not being 
specified, we cannot say what they were. 

CHARGE IX. % That he caused juries to be com- 
V posed of partial, corrupt, and unqualified persons, 
" who were not freeholders." Very bad if true, of 
which, however, no proof, and no instance, is attempt- 
ed to be given. One thing, at any rate, there were no 
special juries in those days. They, which are " ap- 
pointed" by the Master of the Crown-Office, came after 
Catholic kings were abolished. But, not to mention that 
Protestant Betsy dispensed with juries altogether, when 
she pleased, and tried and punished even vagabonds and 
rioters by martial law, do we not now in our own free 
and enlightened and liberal Protestant days, see many 
men transported for seven years, WITHOUT ANY 
JURY AT ALL? Aye, and that, too, in numerous 
cases, only for being more than 1 5 minutes at a time 
out of their houses, (which the law calls their castles,) 
between sunset and sunrise? Aye, but this is with con- 
sent of Parliament! Oh! I had forgotten that. That's 
an answer. 

CHARGE X. " That excessive bail hath," (by the 
Judges, of course,) " been required of persons commit- 
■" ted in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the laws 
*' made for the libertv of the subject," 
33* 



270 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

CHARGE XI. " That excessive fines hath been im- 
" posed, and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted. 

CHARGE XII. a That he had made promises and 
4i grants of fines before conviction and judgment on the 
"party." 

380. I take these three charges together. As to fines 
and bail, look at Protestant Betsy's and Protestant 
James I.'s reigns. But, coming to our own times; 7,for 
having expressed my indignation at the flogging of Eng- 
lish local-militia men, in the heart of England, under a 
guard of German troops, was two years imprisoned in 
a felon's gaol, and, at the expiration of the time, had to 
pay a fine of a thousand pounds, and to give bail for 
SEVEN YEARS, myself, in three thousand pounds 
with two sureties in two thousand pounds each. The 
H Convention," who gave us the " Protestant Deliverer" 
does not cite any instances; but, while we cannot but 
allow, that the amiable lenity of our Protestant bail- 
works appeared most conspicuously, in 1822, in the 
5001. bail taken of the Protestant Right Reverend 
Father in God, Percy Jocelyn, Bishop of Clogher, 
brother of the late and uncle of the present Earl of 
Roden, which Protestant Bishop stood, on the oaths of 
seven witnesses, accused of, (in conjunction with John 
Movelly, a soldier of the foot Guards in London,) an 
unnatural offence, and which Protestant Bishop finally 
fled from trial; though our Protestant bail -works ap- 
peared so gentle and so amiable here, and exacted only 
a bail of five hundred pounds, with two sureties in two 
hundred pounds each, from a PROTESTANT BISH- 
OP, (charged, on the oaths of seven witnesses, with 
such an enormous offence,) whose income had, for ma- 
ny years, been about twelve or fifteen thousand a year ; 
though our Protestant bail-works appeared so amiable, 
so dove-like in this case, and also in the case of the 
Soldier, (partner of the Bishop,) from whom bail of 
200/. with two sureties in 1001. each was taken, and the 
Soldier, who was at once let out of prison, did, in imi- 
tation of the Bishop, flee from trial, though he was an 
enlisted soldier, and though his regiment was stationed 
in London: — That, while we cannot but allow, thatoup 
.Protestant bail-works were characterized by gentleness 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 271 

and mildness in these memorable cases; yet, they have 
not always been in the same dove-like mood ; for, 
That, in the year 181 1 , James Byrne, a Catholic, who 
had been a coachman in the Jocelyn family, having as- 
serted that this same Protestant Bishop attempted to 
commit an unnatural offence on' him, the said James 
Byrne was imprisoned at once before indictment, and 
was, from his prison, brought to trial as a criminal: 
That, at this trial, the Protestant Bishop aforesaid, de- 
clared on his OATH, that Byrne had charged him 
FALSELY: — That Byrne was sentenced, for this al- 
leged libel, proved on the oath of this Protestant Bish- 
op, to be imprisoned in a felon's gaol for two years, to 
be three times publicly lohipped, and, at the end of the 
two years, to give bail for life, in 500/. himself, with 
two sureties in 200/. each: — That James Byrne was 
carried into the gaol, having been first flogged half to 
death: — That, at the end of two years, Byrne lay sev- 
eral months more in gaol for want of sureties: — That 
this Protestant Bishop was, at this time, Bishop of 
Ferns, and that he was, after this, promoted to be Bish- 
op of Clogher, and made a Commissioner of the 
Board of Education. So that our Protestant bail- 
works have not always been so very gentle. Nay, if 
we were to look into our gaols, even at this moment, we 
might find a man who has hardly a penny in the world, 
whose crime was libel, who has a fine of 600/. to pay, 
who has more than 500/. bail to find, with two sureties 
FOR LIFE, whose period of imprisonment has expired 
years ago, and who may, not only possibly, but proba- 
bly, end his life in that gaol, from inability to pay his 
fine and to find the requisite bail. Until, therefore, some 
zealous admirer of the " glorious revolution" will be 
pleased to furnish us with something specific as to the 
bail and fines in James's reign, we ought, in prudence, 
to abstain from even any mention of this charge against 
the unfortunate king; for, to talk of them in too censori- 
ous a strain, may possibly receive a no very charitable 
interpretation. But there had been illegal and cruel 
punishments in his reign. What punishments? There 
had been no people burnt , there had been no racks, as 
there had been in the reigns of Protestants Betsy and 



212 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

James I. Why, Sir John Cox Hippesley, in a petition 
to Parliament, a year or two ago, asserted that the tread- 
mill was " cruel and illegal." Yet it stands, and that, 
too, for very trifling offences. Sir John might be wrong; 
but this shows that there might also be two opinions 
about punishments in the time of James; and we have 
to lament that those who brought in ■" the deliverer," 
were so careless as to specify none of those instances, 
which might have enabled us to make, as to this matter, 
a comparison between a Catholic King and a Protestant 
one. — But, he granted away fines before the conviction 
of the party. Indeed! What, then, we have, in our 
happy day, under a Protestant king, no fines granted be- 
fore-hand to informers of any sort? Ah! but this is 
with consent of Parliament! I had forgotten that again. 
I am silenced! 

381. These were the offences of king James; these 
were the grounds, as recorded in the Statute-book of 
the " glorious revolution," made, as the same Act ex- 
presses, to " deliver this kingdom from Popery and ar- 
61 bitrary power, and to prevent the Protestant religion 
from being subverted ;" and, seeing that this was imme- 
diately followed by a perpetual exclusion of Catholics, 
and those who should marry with Catholics, from the 
throne, it is clear that this was a revolution entirely Pro- 
testant, and that it was an event directly proceeding 
from the " Reformation." This being the case, I 
should now proceed to take a view of the consequences, 
and particularly of the costs of this grand change, which 
was " Reformation" the third. But there are still to 
notice some things, which lying history and vulgar pre- 
judice urge against this unfortunate Catholic king who 
has been asserted to have been the adviser of his late 
brother in all those deeds which have been deemed 
wicked, and especially in the putting of Lord Russell 
and Algernon Sydney to death for high treason. 

382. Alas! how have we been deluded upon this sub- 
ject! I used to look upon these as two murdered men. 
A compulsion to look into realities, and to discard ro- 
mance, has taught me the contrary. The. Protestants 
were in the feign of Charles II. continually hatching 
Popish plots, and, by contrivances the most diabolical. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 27o 

bringing innocent. Catholics to the scaffold and the gib- 
bet; and, in the course of these their proceedings, they, 
were constantly denying the prerogative of the King to 
pardon, or to mitigate the punishment, of, their victims. 
But, at last, the King got real proof of a Protestant plot ! 
The King was ill, and a conspiracy was formed for set- 
ting aside his brother by force of arms, if the King 
should die. The King recovered, but the Protestant 
Plot went on. The scheme was to rise in arms against 
the Government, to pay and bring in an army of Pro- 
testants from Scotland, and in short, to make now that 
sort of u Reformation" the third, which did not take 
place till, as we have seen, some years afterwards. In 
this Protestant plot, Russell and Sydney were two 
great leaders. Russell did not attempt to deny that he 
had had a part in the conspiracy; his only complaint was, 
that the indictment was not agreeable to law ; but, 
he was told, which was true, that it was perfectly agree- 
able to numerous precedents in cases of trials of Popish 
plotters! When brought to the place of execution, Rus- 
sell did not deny his guilt, but did not explicitly confess 
"it. That part of his sentence, which ordered his bow- 
els to be ripped out, while he was yet alive, and his bo- 
dy to be quartered, was, at the intercession of his fami- 
ly, remitted by the King, who, in yielding to their pray- 
er, cuttingly said, "My Lord Russell shall find, that I 
" am possessed of that prerogative, which, in the case 
" of lord Stafford, he thought ft to deny me." 

383. As to Sydney, he had been one of the leading 
men in the " thorough godly" work of the last reign, and 
had even been one of the Commissioners for trying 
Charles I. and bringing him to the block, though, it is 
said by his friends, he did not actually sit at the trial. — 
At the restoration of Charles II. he had taken refuge 
abroad. But having confessed the errors of his young- 
er years, and promised to be loyal in future, this King 
under the guidance of a Popish brother, pardoned him, 
great, as his offences had been. Yet, after this, he con- 
spired to destroy the Government of that King, or, at the 
very least, to set aside that brother, and this too, obsei ve, 
by force of arms, by open rebellion against the King 
who had pardoned him, and by plunging into all the hor- 



£74 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

rors of another civil war that country, which he had 
before assisted to desolate. If any man ever deserved 
-an ignominious death, this Sydney deserved his. He 
did not deny, he could not deny, that the conspiracy had 
existed, and that he was one of its chiefs. He had no 
complaint but one, and that related to the evidence against 
him. There was only one parole witness to his acts, 
and in cases of high treason, the law of England requir- 
ed two. And, here it was that ablush might, (if it were 
possible) have been raised upon the cheeks of these re- 
vilers of Popery ; for, this very law, this law, which 
has saved the lives of so many innocent persons; this 
law which ought to engrave gratitude to its author on 
the heart of every Englishman; this law came from that 
very Popish Queen Mary, whom artful knaves have 
taught generations of thoughtless people to call " the 
bloody,''* while, too, she was the wife of, and had for 
coadjutor, that Philip II. whom to hold up a sanguina- 
ry Popish tyrant has been a great object with all our 
base deluders. 

384. Seeing, however, that Sydney had such a strong 
attachment to this Popish law, and that there really was 
but one witness against him; seeing that he could not 
bear the thought of dying without two witnesses against 
him, the crown-lawyers, (all Protestants, mind, who 
had abjured the " damnable errors of Popery,") contri- 
ved to accommodate him with a couple, by searching 
his drawers and making up a second witness out of his 
own papers! It was in vain, that he rested upon this 
flaw in the proceedings; all men knew that hundreds of 
Catholics had suffered death upon evidence slight in- 
deed, compared with that against him: men were not to 
be amused with this miserable special plea; and all men 
of sense and justice concurred in the opinion, that he 
received substantial justice, and no more. 

385. So much for the " good old cause, for which 
06 Hampden died in the field, and Sydney on the scaffold.'* 
What credulous creatures we have been; and who 
more so than myself! Aye, but these Protestant patriots 
only contemplated insurrection and the introduction of 
Foreign armies. And with what more was O'Quigly 
charged, only about twenty-seven years ago? With 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 275 

What more were the Shearses and Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald and Watt and Downie and Despard, 

and scores of others charged? And were Thistle- 
wood, Ings, Brunt and Tidd charged with more? 
Oh, no; but with a great deal less; and they suffered, 
not for compassing the death of the King, but of his 
Ministers, a crime made high treason, for the first time, 
in our own Protestant days, and by a Parliament from 
which tyrannical Popish people are wholly excluded. 
There was one Keiling, who, from a Protestant plot- 
ter, became an informer, and he, in order to fortify his 
own evidence, introduced his brother-in-law to the 
conspirators, in order to betray them, and bring them 
to justice. Well, but have we not had our Castleses, 
our Olivers and our Edwardses, and, has not Mr. 
Broughman said, in the House of Commons, that 
" while there are such men as Ings in the world, there 
must be such men as Edwards?" However, no histo- 
rian, Protestant as he may have been, enemy as he may 
have been of Charles's and James's memory, ever had 
the impudence to impute to either of them the having 
employed people to instigate others to commit acts of 
high treason, and then bringing those others to the block, 
while they rewarded the instigators. 

386. It is said, and I think truly, that Charles II. 
was, at one time, in pecuniary treaty with the King 
of France, for the purpose of re-establishing the Catholic 
Church in England. Well, had not he as much right to 
do this, as Edward VI. had to bring over German troops 
to root out that ancient Church which had been establish- 
ed for 900 years, and which was guaranteed to the 
people by Magna Charta? And if doing this by means 
of French troops were intended by Charles, can that 
be complained of by those, who approve of the bring- 
ing in of Dutch troops to u settk v the kingdom? After 
all however, if it were such a deadly sin for a Popishly ad- 
vised king of England to be in a pecuniary treaty with the 
j king of France, which treaty neither king nor Catho- 
lics ever acted upon, what was it in the Protestant and 
Catholic-hating Sydney, and the Younger Hampden and 
Armstrong and others to be real and bona-fide and mo- 
ney-touching pensioners of that same King of France, 



276 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

which fact has become unquestionable from DalrympleV 
Memoirs, page 315 of Appendix? 

387. But, now, if James be to be loaded with all those 
which have been called the bad deeds of his brother's 
reign, we cannot, with common justice, refuse him the 
merit of good deeds of that reign. This reign gave 
us, then, the Act of Habeas Corpus, which Blackstone 
calls "the second Great Charter of English Liberty" 
There are many other acts of this reign, tending to se- 
cure the liberties and all the rights of the people; but, 
if there had been only this one Act, ought not it alone 
to have satisfied the people, that they had nothing to 
apprehend from a Popishly inclined king on the throne? 
Here these "Popish tyrants," Charles and James, gave 
up, at one stroke of the pen, at a. single writing of 
Charles's name, all prerogatives enabling them, as their 
predecessors had been enabled, to put people into pri- 
son, and to keep them there in virtue of a mere warrant, 
in order, from a Minister. And, was this a proof of 
that arbitrary disposition, of which we hear them in- 
cessantly accused? We are always boasting about 
this famous Act of Habeas Corpus ; but, never have Ave 
the gratitude to observe, that it came from those against 
whom Russell and Sydney conspired, and the last of 
whom was finally driven from his palace by the Dutch 
guards in 1688. 

388. Then, again, was this act ever suspended during 
the reigns of these Popish kings? Neyer; not even 
for a single day. But, the moment the u glorious revo- 
lution," or Reformatio^ the third came, the Dutch " de- 
liverer" was, by the Protestant " Convention," whose 
grand business it was to get rid of " arbitrary power ;" 
the moment that this " glorious" affair had taken place, 
that moment was the Dutch "deliverer" authorized to 
put in prison, and to keep there, any Englishman that 
he or his Ministers might suspect! But, why talk of 
this? We ourselves have seen this "second great 
Charter of English liberty" suspended for seven years 
at a time; and, besides this, we have seen the King and 
his Ministers authorized to imprison any one whom 
they chose to imprison, in any gaol that they chose, in 
any dungeon that they chose; to keep the imprisoned 



l 



l'ROTESTANT REFORMATION, 2ft 

person from all communication with friends, wives, hus- 
bands, fathers, mothers and children: to prevent them 
from the use of pen, ink. paper and books; to deny 
them the right of being confronted with their accusers; 
to refuse them a specification of their offence and the 
names of their accuse/s; to put them out of prison, (if 
alive,) when they vieased, without any trial; and, at 
last, to hold them V bail for good behaviour, and that, 
too, mind, still without stating to them the names of the 
witnesses against them, or even the nature of their of- 
fence! All tVis vve have done in our own dear Protest- 
ant times, wnile our parliament house and our pulpits 
rim? with ^raises of the " glorious revolution" that"dfe- 
liversd us from popery and slavery." 

389. There was another great thing, too, done in the 
reign*- of these Popish kings; namely, the settling of 
the Provinces, (now States,) of America. Virginia 
hzd been attempted to be settled under u good Bess," by 
chat unprincipled minion, Sir Walter Raleigh, who, 
in the next reign, lost, on the scatfold, that life 5 which 
he ought to have lost thirty years before; but the at-* 
tempt wholly failed. A little, and very little, was done, 
in the two succeeding reigns. It was not until that of 
Charles II. that charters and patents were granted, thai 
property became real, and that consequent population 
and prosperity came. This was a great event; great 
in itself, and greater in its consequences, some of which 
consequences we have already felt, others we are now 
feeling, but others, and by far of greater moment, we 
have yet to feel. 

390. All these fine colonies were made by this pojrisk- 
ly inclined King, and by his really Popish brother. Two 
of them, the Carolinas, take their name from the King 
himself; another, and now the greatest of all, New- 
York, from the King's brother, who was Duke of the 
city of that name in Old England. These were the 
men who planted these the finest and happiest colonies 
that the sun ever lighted and warmed. They were 
planted by these Popish people; from them, from their 
u mere motion," as the law calls it, came those charters 
and patents, without which those countries might, to 
this hour, have been little better than a wilderness. From 

24 



278 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

these Popish kings the colonies came. By whom were 
they lost ! Not by abused and calumniated Papists, at 
any rate. Our Popish ancettors had, at different times, 
made England mistress of different parts of France. 
Protestant Edward VI. lost Boulogne, and Protestant 
Betsy bartered away Calais and the county of Oye for 
100,000 crowns, and thus put h? r Protestant seal to 
England's everlasting expulsion from the Continent of 
Europe. After one more Protestant reign, inglorious 
beyond all example, came these two Polish kings, who 
planted countries which were more than & compensation 
for the European loss. Then came that u glorious" af- 
fair, and it furnished all those principles , bj which, at 
the end of only about seventy years, this condensation 
was wrested from us; and not only this; but bj which 
was created a power, a great maritime power, -\t the 
very name of which, affect what they may, English- 
men, once so high and daring, now grow pale, 

391. We shall, before the close of the next Number, 
and after we have taken a view of the torments inflict- 
ed on the Catholics, (Irish and English,) in the reigns 
of William, Anne, and the Georges, trace this u Re- 
formation" the fourth, directly back to " Reformation" 
the third; we shall show, that, in spite of the fine rea- 
soning of Blcakstone, the deeds of the " Convention" 
were things to be imitated; we shall find that the List 
of Charges against James, drawn up by the " Lord May- 
or of London, Aldermen, Common-Councilmen and oth- 
ers," was as handy in 1776 as it had been in 1688; we 
shall find this Reformation the third, producing, in its 
progress, that monster in legislation, that new and here- 
tofore unheard-of species of tyranny, called Bills of 
Pains and Penalties, which are of pure Protestant ori- 
gin; and we shall finally see, that this famous and "glo- 
rious" affair, all Protestant as it was, did, at last, bring, 
though it crossed the Atlantie to fetch it, that dawn of 
liberty, which the Catholics began to behold at the end 
of a night of cruel slavery, which had lasted for more than 
two hundred years. But, I must not even here, lest it 
should not occur to my mind again, omit to notice, and 
to request the reader to notice, that, of the above-men- 
tioned colonies, the only ones that wholly abstained 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 279 

from religious persecution, the only ones that, from the 
first settling, proclaimed complete religious liberty, were 
those granted by patent to the Duke of York, (after- 
wards the Catholic James II.) to Lord Baltimore, a 
Catholic nobleman, and to William Penn, who suffer- 
ed long imprisonment for his adherence to this Popish 
king. We shall, by-and-by, find all the colonies cor- 
dially united in declaring the character of a Protestant 
king to be " marked by every act that may define a ty- 
rant ;" but, this much we know, at any rate, that the 
colonies granted to and settled by Catholics, and by 
Penn, an adherent of James, were the only ones that 
had, from first to last, proclaimed and strictly adhered 
to, complete freedom as to matters of religion; and 
that, too, after the Protestants, at home, had, for more 
than a hundred years, been most cruelly and unremit- 
tingly persecuting the Catholics, 



LETTER XIV, 



William's Triumph over James and the Catho- 
lics. 

A "No-Popery" War requires Money to carry it 
on. 

Burnet's Scheme on Borrowing and Funding. 

Origin of Banks and Bank Notes. 

Heavy Taxes, Excise, Septennial Bill. 

Attempt to Tax the Americans. 

Americans revolt in the face of the Doctrines chp 
Blackstone. 

Their Charges against George III. 



Kensington, 31 st December, 1825. 
My Friends, 

392. We have seen in the foregoing Letter, that Re- 
formation the Third, commonly called? the U Glori- 
ous Revolution^ grew directly out of the Reformation 
the Second, and we are now to see Reformation 



280 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

the Fourth, commonly called "the American Revolu- 
tion" grow directly out of Reformation the Third; 
and we are, before we get to the end of this present Let- 
ter, to see how severely the English people have been 
scourged , and how much more severely they -are likely 
still to be scourged, in consequence of these several u Re- 
formations," which have all proceeded from Reforma- 
tion the First, as naturally as the stem and the branches 
e>f the tree proceed from the root. 

393. We have seen, that King James and his family 
were set aside, because they were Catholics ; and we are 
f«o bear that in mind, not forgetting, at the same time, that 
Alfred the Great was a Catholic, and that those kings 
of England, who really conquered France, and won that 
title of King of France, which George* III. gave up, 
we're also Catholics. But we are now particularly to bear 
in mind, that James, an Englishman, was set aside, that 
William, a Dutchmau, was made king in his stead, and 
that James's heirs were set aside too, because he and they 
were Catholics. Bearing these things constantly in mind, 
we shall now see what took place, and how the "Pro- 
testant Reformation" worked, till it produced the 
Debt, the Banks, the Stock-Jobbers, and the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 

394. James found faithful adherents in his Irish sub- 
jects, who fought and bled in his cause with all that bra- 
very and disregard of life of which so many Irishmen 
have given proof. But, with the aid of Dutch and Ger- 
man armies, paid by England, the "Deliverer" finally 
triumphed over James and the Irish, and the whole 
kingdom submitted to the sway of the former. It is 
hardly necessary to say, that the Catholics were noio y 
doomed to sutler punishments heretofore unknown; and 
that, if their faith still existed in the kingdom, it could 
scarcely be owing to any thing short of the immediate 
superintendauce of Providence. The oppressions which 
they had had to endure under former sovereigns were 
terrible enough; but now began a series of acts against 
them, such as the world never heard of before. I shall, 
farther on, have to give a sketch, at least, of these acts, 
which we shall find going on increasing in number and 
\n severity, and, at least, presenting a mass of punish- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 2SI 

ment which, but to think of, makes one's blood run cold, 
when, all of a sudden, in the 18th year of George II L, 
came the American Revolution^ which grew out of the 
English Revolution, and, (mark the justice of God!) 
which produced the first relaxation in this most dreadful 
penal code. 

395. But HOW did the American Revolution grow 
out of the Dutch Deliverer's, or " Glorious" Revolution? 
A very pertinent and important question, my friends, and 
one that it is my duty to answer in the fullest and most 
satisfactory manner; for this points to the very heart of 
my subject. We shall, by-and-by, see the American 
Revolution producing wonderful events; and therefore 
we must, with the greatest possible care, trace it to its 
true source; especially as in all human probability, this 
nation has yet to receive from that quarter, blows far hea- 
vier than it has ever yet had to sustain. 

398. The " Protestant Deliverer 1 ' had, in the first 
place, brought over a Dutch Army for the English na- 
tion to support. Next, there were the expenses and 
bloodshed of a civil war to endure for the sake of the 
k - deliverance from popery" But these, though they pro- 
duced suffering enough, were a mere nothing compared 
io what was to follow; for this was destined to scourge 
the nation for ages and ages yet to come, and to pro- 
duce, in the end, effects that the human mind can hard- 
ly contemplate with steadiness. 

&97. King James had, as we have seen, been receiv- 
ed in France. Louis XIV. treated him as King of Eng- 
land, Scotland and Ireland. William hated Louis for 
this; and England had to pay for that hatred. All those 
who had assisted in a conspicuous manner, to bring in 
the "Deliverer," were now embarked in the same boat 
with him. They were compelled to humour and to 
yield to him. They, historians say, wished to give the 
crown solely to his icife, because, she being James's 
daughter, there would have been less of- revolution in 
this than in giving the crown to an utter alien. But he 
flatly told them that he " would not hold his power by 
the apron strings ;" and, the dispute having continued 
for some time, he.cut the matter short with them by de* 
daring, that if they did not give him the crown he would 
24* 



282 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

go back to Holland, and learn them to their old sovereign * 
This was enough: they gave him the crown without 
more hesitation; and they found that they had got not 
only a " Deliverer," but a master at the same time. 

398. The same reasons that induced a submission to 
bis conduct in the " deliverer," induced the same par- 
ties to go cordially along with him in his war against 
France. There was James in France; a great part of 
his people were still for him; if France were at peace 
with England, the communication could not be cut off. 
Therefore, war with France was absolutely necessary 
to the maintenance of William on the throne; and, if 
he were driven from the throne, what was to become of 
those who had obtained from him, as the price of their 
services for bringing him in, immense grants of Crown 
Lands and various other enormous emoluments, none of 
which they could expect to retain for a day, if James 
were restored? Besides this, there was the danger, 
and very great danger too, to their own estates and 
their lives: for, though that which they did was, and is, 
called a " glorious revolution," it would, if James had 
been restored, have been called by a very different 
name; and that name would not have been an empty 
sound; it would have been applied to very practical 
purposes; and, the chances are, that very few of the 
principal actors would have wholly escaped. And. 
there were, moreover, the possessors of the immense 
property of the Church, founded and endowed by our 
fathers. The confiscation of this was not yet of so an- 
cient a date as to have been forgotten. Tradition is 
yery long-lived. Many and many, then alive, knew all 
the story well. They had heard their grandfathers 
say, that the Catholic Church kept all the poor; that 
the people were then better off; and, they felt, the 
whole of the people felt, that England had lost by the 
change. Therefore, in case of the restoration of James, 
the possessors of Church property, whether they were 
lay or clerical, might reasonably have their fears. 

399, Thus, all these deeply interested parties, who 
were also the most powerful parties in the kingdom,. 
WW for a war with France, which they rightly regard- 
ed as absolutely »ecessary to the keeping of ^UliauL 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 283 

on the throne, and to the quiet enjoyment of their great 
possessions, if not actually to the safety of their lives. 
This war, ought, therefore, to have been called, £' a war 
" to preserve Church-property, Crown-lands, and other 
u great emoluments to their present possessors." But, 
those who make wars, like those who make confisca-^ 
lions of property belonging to the church and poor, 
generally know how to give them a good name ; and, 
accordingly this was called, and proclaimed, as a war, 
" to preserve the Protestant Religion, and to keep out 
" Popery and slavery." It was a real " no-popery" war; 
and, though attended with the most dreadful conse- 
quences to the nation, it answered all the purposes of 
its inventors. The history of this war, as an affair of 
fighting, is of little consequence to us. It was, indeed, 
attended, in this respect, with disgrace enough; but it 
answered the great object of its inventors. It did 
not hurt France; it. did not get rid of James and his 
son; but, it made the English people IDENTIFY their- 
old King and his son with the FOREIGN ENEMIES 
of England ! That was what the inventors of the war 
wanted; and that they completely got. It was in vain 
that King James protested, that he meant no harm ta 
England ; it was in vain that he reminded the people, 
that he had been compelled to flee to France; in vain 
his declarations, that the French only wanted to assist 
in restoring him to his rights. They saw him in France; 
they saw the French fighting for him and against Eng- 
land: that was quite sufficient. Men do not reason in 
such a case; and this the inventors of this war knew 
very well. 

400. But, 'though passion muddles the head, though 
even honest feeling may silence the reasoning faculties, 
the PURSE is seldom to be quieted so easily: and, this 
war, though for " the preservation of the Protestant 
" religion and for keeping out Popery and slavery," 
,soon began to make some most dreadful tugs at this most 
sensitive part of those accoutrements that almost make 
part and parcel of the human frame. The expenses of 

this famous <c no popery" war , Good God ! 

what has this kingdom not suffered for that horrid and 
hypocritical cry !.,,.,. , The expenses of this famous 



284 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

" no-popery" war were enormous. The taxes were, 
of course, in proportion to those expenses; and the 
people, who already paid more than four times as much 
as they had paid in the time of James, began not only 
to murmur, but to give no very insignificant signs of 
sorrow for having been " delivered!" France was pow- 
erful; the French King liberal and zealous; and the 
state of things was ticklish. Force, as far as law, and 
the suspension of law, could go, was pretty fairly put 
in motion; but, a scheme was, at last, hit upon, to get 
the money, and yet not to tug so very hard at that tender 
part, the purse. 

401. An Act of Parliament was passed, in the year 
1694, being the 5th ) r ear of William and Mary, chap. 
20, the title of which act is in the following words; 
words that every man should bear in mind; words fa^ 
tal to the peace and the happiness of England; words 
which were the precursor of a scourge greater than 
ever before afflicted any part of God's creation. — " An 
" Act for granting to their Majesties several rates and 
" duties upon Tonnage of Ships and Vessels, and upon 
" Beer, Ale and other Liquors, for securing certain RE- 
"COMPENCES and ADVANTAGES in the said 
" Act mentioned to such persons as shall VOLUNTA- 
" RILY ADVANCE the sum of fifteen hundred thou- 
" sand pounds towards carrying on the War against 
" France" This Act lays certain duties, sufficient to 
pay the interest of this sum of 1 ,500,000/. Then it. 
points out the manner of subscribing; the mode of pay- 
ing the interest, or annuities; and then it provides, that, 
if so much of the whole sum be subscribed by such a 
time, the subscribers shall have a charter, under the 
title of "THE GOVERNOR AND COMPANY OF 
"THE BANK OF ENGLAND!" 

402. Thus arose loans, funds, banks, bankers, bank- 
notes, and a NATIONAL DEBT; things that England 
had never beared, or dreamed of, before this war for 
" preserving the Protestant religion as by law establish- 
ed:" things without which she had had a long and glo- 
rious career of many centuries, and had been the great- 
est and happiest country in the world; things which she 
never would, and never could, have heard of, had it not 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 285 

been for what is audaciously called the " Reforma- 
tion," seeing that to lend money at interest ; that is to 
say, for gain ; that is to say, to receive money for the 
use of money ; seeing that to do this was contrary, and 
still is contrary to the principles of the Catholic Church; 
and, amongst Christians, or professors of Christianity, 
such a thing was never heard of before that which is 
impudently called " The Reformation." The Rev- 
erend Mr. O'Callaohan, in his excellent little work, 
which I had the honour to republish last winter, and 
which ought to he read by every man, and especially 
every young man, in the kingdom, has shown, that the 
ancient philosophers, the Fathers of the Church, both 
Testaments, the Canons of the Church, the decisions of 
Pope and councils, all agree, all declare, that to take 
money for Ike use of money is sinful. Indeed no such 
tiling was ever attempted to be justified, until the savage 
Henry VIII. had cast off the supremacy of the Pope. 
Jews did it; but then Jews had no civil rights. They 
existed only by mere sufferance They could be shut 
up, or banished, or even sold, at the king's pleasure. 
They were regarded as a sort of monsters, who pro- 
fessed to be the lineal descendants and to hold the 
opinions of those who had murdered the Son of God 
and Saviour of Men. They were not permitted to 
practice their blasphemies openly. If they had syna- 
gogues, they were unseen by the people. The horrid 
wretches themselves were compelled to keep out of 
public view on Sundays, and on Saints' 1 days. They 
were not allowed to pollute with their presence the 
streets or the roads of a Christian country, on days set 
apart for public devotion. In degraded wretches like 
these, usury, that is, receiving money for the use of mo- 
ncy, was tolerated, just for the same cause that incest 
is tolerated amongst dogs. 

403. How far the base spirit of usury may now have 
crept in even amongst Catholics themselves i know not, 
nor is it of importance as to the matter immediately be- 
fore me. It is certain, that, before the "Reformation" 
there was no such tiling known amongst Christians as 
receiving money, or profit in any shape, merely for the 
me of money. It would be easy to show that mischiefs 



286 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

enormous are inseparable from such a practice; but, we 
shall see enough of those mischiefs in the end. Suifice 
it, for the present, that this- national usury, which was 
now invented for the first time, arose out t of the "Reform- 
ation."' 

404. This monstrous thing, the usury, or funding 
system, was not only a Protestant invention; not only 
arose out of the " Reformation;" not only was establish- 
ed for the express purpose o^ carrying on a war for the 
preservation of this Church of England against the ef- 
forts of Popery ; but, the inventor, BURNET, was the 
most indefatigable advocate for the " Reformation"" 
that had ever existed. So that the thing was not only 
invented by Protestants to do injury to Catholics; it 
was not only intended by them for this purpose; it was 
not only destined, by the wisdom and justice of God to 
be a scourge, to be the most terrible of all scourges, to 
the Protestants themselves; it was not only destined to 
make, at last, the " Church by law established" look at 
the usurers with no very quiet feelings: the thing was 
not only thus done and thus destined to operate; but, 
the instrument was the fittest, the very fittest, that could 
have been found in the whole world. 

405. Burnet, whose first name, as the Scotch call 
it, was Gilbert, was, in the first place, a Political 
Church Parson; next, he was a monstrously lying 
historian; next, he was a Scotchman; and, lastly, he 
received the thanks of Parliament for his " His- 
tory of the Reformation ;" that is to say, a mass of the 
most base falsehoods and misrepresentations that ever 
were put upon paper. So that, the instrument was the 
very fittest that could have been found on earth. This 
man had, at the accession of James II, gone to Holland, 
where he became a Secretary to William, (afterwards 
the " Deliverer;") and where he corresponded with, 
and aided the " Glorious Revolutionizes" in England; 
and, in 1689, the year after the "deliverance," the 
"deliverer made him BISHOP OF SALISBURY, as 
a reward for his " glorious revolution" services! 

406. This was the fittest man in the world to invent that 
which was destined to be a scourge to England. Though 
become a Bishop, he was still a most active politician; 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 287 

and, when the difficulty of carrying on the " no-popery^ 
war arose, and when those fears, mentioned in para- 
graph 400, began to be powerful, this Bishop of the 
"^--established Church" it was, who invented, who 
advised, and who, backed by the " Deliverer," caused 
to be adopted the scheme of borrowing, of mortgaging 
the taxes, and of pawning the property and labour oi fu- 
ture generations. Pretty " deliverance /" Besides spar- 
ing the purses of the people, ?nd quieting their discon- 
tents on account of taxes, this scheme had a further and 
still more important object ir view; namely, to make all 
those who had money to lenc 7 , wish to see the new king 
and new dynasty, and all \) ft grants and emoluments of 
the " glorious revolution" f)lks upheld! That was the 
permanent object of this u no-popery i project. 

407. The case was this, and we ougl.it clearly to un- 
derstand it, seeing that fere is the true orign of all our 
present alarms, dangers and miseries. James II. and 
his son had been set aside, because they were Catholics: 
a "glorious revolution"had been made; the great malo 
ers of it had immense possessions, which had been pub- 
lic or church possessions. If James were restored, all 
these would be taken from them, together with all the 
titles of nobility, all tie bishopricks, and, in short, every- 
thing granted by the "deliverer." And as the "deliv- 
erer" was liable to He, it was necessary to these great 
possessors and " glorious" actors, to take care, if possi- 
ble, that James, or his son, should not be the suceessors 
of the deliverer. Acts of Parliament were passed to pro- 
vide against this danger: but still, experience had shown 
that Acts of Parliament were, in some cases, of but little 
avail, when the great body of the people, feeling acutely, 
were opposed to them. Therefore, something was want- 
ed to bind great numbers of the people fast to the new dr- 
nasty. The cry of " no-Popery" had some power; but 
it had not power sufficient to weigh down that which, : n 
later times, Catlereagh had the insolence to call, thfe 
" ignorant impatience of taxation;" and for which m ~ 
patience the English were, in former times, always re- 
markable. 

408. The " deliverer" and all those who had brought 
him in, together with all those who had been fattened or 



\ 

288 PROTISTA NT REFORMATION. 

elevated by him, weie, as I said before, embarked in the 
same boat: but the g\eat body of the people were not 
yet thus embarked, bdeed, very few of them, compa- 
ratively, were thus embarked. But, if all, or a great 
part, oi those who him money to lend, could, by the 
temptation of great gerai, be induced to lend their mo- 
ney on interest to the Government ; if they cculd be in- 
duced to do this, it was easy to see that all this descrip- 
tion of persons would thc^ be embarked in the same boat 
too; and that they, who must necessarily be a class ha- 
ving great infmence in the Community, would be amongst 
the most zealous supporter^ of the "deliverer," and the 
" glorious^ a iders, abettors^and makers of the " revolt 
tion" which had just taken Jlace. 

409. For these purposes yhis funding system was in- 
vented. It had the two-fok\ object, of raising money 
to carry on the " nQ-poper\fX war; and, of binding to 
the " JVo-popery" Governmeii all those persons who 
wished to lend money at a iigh interest; and these 
were, as is always the case, tht most greedy, the most 
selfish, least public-spirited, un<\ most base and slavish 
and unjust part of the people. Ibe scheme, which was 
quite worthy of the mind of ^ie Protestant Bishop 
BtJBiJET, answered its purposes: it enabled the "deliv- 
erer" to carry on the " no-poperi)? war; it bound fast 
to the "deliverer" and his bringerft-in, all the base and 
selfish and greedy and unfeeling par\ of those who had 
money. The scheme succeeded in effecting its imme- 
diate objects: but, good God! what a scourge did it 
provide for future generations! Wnat troubles, what 
shocks, what sufferings it had in store for a people, 
whose rulers, in an evil hour, resorted to such means 
for the purpose of causing to be trampled under foot 
those whose only crime was that of adhering tothefuilk 
of their fathers ! 

410. The sum at first borrowed was a mere trifle. 
It deceived by its seeming insignificance. But, it was 
very far from being intended to stop with that trifle. 
The inventors knew well what they were about. Their 
design was to mortgage, by degrees, the whole of the 
country, all the lands, all the houses, and all other 
property, and even all labour, to those who would lend 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 289 

their money to the State. The thing soon began to 
swell at a great rate; and before the end of the " glori- 
ous" no-popery war, the interest alone of the DEBT, 
the annual interest, amounted to 1,310,492/. a-year, 
which, observe, was a greater sum than the whole of 
ihe taxes had yearly amounted to in the reign of the 
Catholic James II. ! So that here were taxes laid on 
for ever; mind that: here were, on account of this 
grand no-popery afFair; merely on account of this "glo- 
rious" revolution, which was expressly made for the 
purpose of getting rid of a Catholic King: here were 
additional taxes, laid on for ever, to a greater amount 
xhan the whole of the taxes raised by that Catholic King! 
Thus does the justice of God work! The treatment. 
of the Catholics, at this time, was truly horrible: the 
main body of the English people either approved of 
this treatment, or winked at it: this debt-scheme was 
invented by a Protestant Bishop for the purpose of ut- 
terly extirpating the Catholic religion : and, that reli- 
gion still lives in the kingdom; nay, there are in the 
kingdom a greater number of Catholics than there are 
persons of any one other religion; while the scheme, 
the crafty, the cunning, the deep scheme, has, from its 
ominous birth, been breeding swarms of Jews, Qua- 
kers, Usurers of every description, feeding and fatten- 
ing on the vitals of the country; till, at last, it has pro- 
duced what the world never saw before; starvation in 
the midst of abundance! Yes, verily; this is the pic- 
ture we now exhibit to the world: the Law-Church 
parsons putting up, in all the churches, thanksgiving 
for a plenteous harvest ; and, the main mass of the labour- 
ing people fed and clad worse than the felons in the gaols! 
411. However, we must not anticipate. We shall, 
further on, see something of the probable ultimate ef- 
fects of this dreadful scheme. At present we have to 
see how it, together with the "glorious revolution," 
out of which it arose, led to and produced the Ameri- 
can Revolution; or, " Reformation 9 '' the fourth, by 
which two things were accomplished; first, the lop- 
ping off of a large and valuable part of the dominions 
of England ; second, the creating of a new mercantile 
and naval power, capable of disputing with her that do* 
25 - 



^90 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

minion of the sea, which has, for so many ages, been 
her chief glory, and without possessing which she 
must hecome a second-rate power in Europe. These 
were the things which were accomplished by the Amer- 
ican Revolution ; and, therefore, let us now see what it 
was that produced that revolution; or, rather, let us see 
how it grew directly out of the " glorious revolution" 
and its " no-popery 5 ' wars and debts-. 

412. Burnet's contrivance did very well for present 
use: it made the nation deaf to the voice of all those 
who foreboded mischief from it: it made all those who 
were interested in the funds , advocates for taxation: the 
deep scheme set the rich to live upon the poor, and 
made the former have no feeling for those who bore the 
burden of the taxes: in short, it divided the nation into 
two classes, the tax-payers and the tax-eaters, and these 
latter had the Government at their back. The great 
protection of the people of England always had been, 
that they could not be taxed without their own consent. 
This was always, in Catholic times, the great principle 
of the English Government; and, it is expressly and 
most explicitly asserted in Magna Charta, which was 
the work of a Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury more 
than of any body else. But, how was it to be expected 
that this grand principle would be maintained, when a 
large part of the rich people themselves lived upon the 
taxes? When a man's next door neighbour received 
the taxes paid by that man? When, in short, the com- 
munity was completely divided, one part having a pow- 
erful interest in upholding that which was oppressive 
and ruinous to the other part? 

413. Taxes, of course, went on increasing, and the 
debt went on in the same way. The Protestant interest 
demanded more wars, and brought on a couple of civil 
wars. Taxation marched on with dreadful strides. The 
people did not like it. At the " glorious revolution it 
had been settled and enacted, that there should be a 
new parliament called every THREE YEARS at 
least: and this had been held forth as one of the great 
gains of the " glorious revolution." Another " great 
gain" was, that no pensioner and no placeman were to 
sit in the House of Commons. These things were en- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 291 

acted ; they were laws of the land; they were held forth 
to the people as great things, gained by "Glorious." 
This last act was soon repealed; and placemen and 
pensioners have sitten in the House of Commons ever 
since! But the other act, the act of securing the peo- 
ple a fresh choice every three years, at least; that was a 
vital law. That law was, in the new state of things, a 
state of taxes and debts: a state of things which de-;. 
manded new taxes almost every year: in such a state 
of things, frequent and new parliaments, new choosings 
of short intervals, were absolutely necessary to give the 
people a chance, even so much as a chance, of avoiding 
oppressive taxation, and oppression, indeed, of every 
sort. It was, in short, the only means of protection 
that was left to the people. 

414. Yet, to uphold the new system, it was necessary 
to demolish even this barrier of liberty and property; 
and in the year 1715, being the first year of the reign 
of George I. Chap, xxxviii., this law, this vital law, this 
solemn compact between the Protestant dynasty and the 
people, was repealed and for ever abolished ; and the 
THREE YEARS were changed for SEVEN; and that 
too, observe, by the very men whom the people had 
chosen to sit only for THREE YEARS! Yes, men 
chosen by the people to sit for three years, enacted that 
they would sit for SEVEN ; that they themselves would sit 
for seven; and that those who had chosen them, toge- 
ther with their descendants for ever, should have no 
choice at all, unless they voted for men who might, at 
the king's pleasure, sit for seven years ! 

415. It is useless for us to feel indignation and rage. 
They can do us no good. We shall do well to keep 
ourselves cool. . But, we ought to hear in mind, that 
this thing, which has scourged us so famously, was net 
done by Catholics; that they had no hand in it; nay, 
that it was not only done under the new Protestant d; ~ 
nasty; but that this thing also; this thing, the like i f 
which the world never had and never has heard of, 
that this thing also was done from hostility to the reli- 
gion of our fathers! Good God! What has this na* 
fcion not suffered, and what has it not yet to suffer, for 
&i$ hostility! There is hardly one great calamity, ot 



am. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 



disgrace, that has befallen England during the last three 
hundred years which we do not clearly trace to this fa- 
tal source. 

416. But this SEPTENNIAL BILL; this measure, 
which is perfectly matchless in its nature, and which 
taas led to such dreadful effects; this is a thing which 
we must have in its original black and white ; and we 
must have every word of it too; for here w T e have a 
complete " no-popery v law; and of this law we are 
tasting the effects to the present hour, and we shall taste 
them for a long while yet. to come. The following are 
the words, all the words, of this memorable Act. 

417. " Whereas in and by an Act of Parliament made 
" in the sixth year of the reign of their late Majesties 
" King William and Queen Mary, (of ever blessed me- 
" mory,) intitulated, An Act for the frequent meeting 
" and calling of Parliaments: It was among other things 
"enacted, that from thenceforth, no Parliament what- 
" soever, that should at any time then after be called, 
" assembled or held, should have any continuance long- 
" er than for three years only at the farthest, to he ac- 
c * counted from the day on which by the writ Of sum- 
" mons the said Parliament should be appointed to meet; 
'* And whereas it has been found by experience, that 
" the said clause hath proved very grievous and burthen- 
c< some, by occasioning much greater and more conti- 
Ci nued expenses in order to elections of Members to 
" serve in Parliament, and more violent and lasting 
'•'heats and animosities among the subjects of this realm 
"than were ever known before the said clause was 
"enacted; and the said provision, if it should continue, 
<"' may probably at this juncture, WHEN A REST- 
" LESS AND POPISH FACTION ARE DESIGN- 
" ING and endeavouring to renew the rebellion within, 
" this kingdom, and an invasion from abroad be destruc- 
" tive to the peace and security of the Government." 
" Be it enacted by the King's most excellent Majesty, 
" by and with the advice and consent of the Lord's 
" Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament 
" assembled, and by the authority of the same, That 
*'this present Parliament and all Parliaments that shall 
" at any time hereafter be called, assembled or helci. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 293 

^ shall and may respectively have continuance for seven 
" years, and no longer, to be accounted from the day 
" on which by the writ of summons, this present Par- 
" liament hath been, or any future Parliament shall be 
" appointed to meet, unless this present or any such 
a .Parliament hereafter to be summoned, shall be soon- 
" er dissolved by his Majesty, his heirs, or successors." 

418. So, here it is again! The "restless Popish 
faction" was at work! So that the rights, the most 
precious rights of the whole of the people, were to be 
taken away merely on account of the designs and wish- 
es of a "Popish faction!" What harm could a mere 
"faction" do at an election? The truth is, these pre- 
tences were false: the people, the great body of the 
people, smarting under the lash of enormous taxation, 
became disaffected towards the new order of things: 
they were strongly disposed to revert to their former 
state; it was suspected, and, indeed, pretty welt 
known, that they would, at the next election, have 
chosen, almost every where, members having the same 
sentiments; and, therefore, it was resolved, that they 
should not have the power of doing it. However, the 
deed was done; we have felt the effects of it from that 
day to this; and we have now to remember, that even 
this terrible curtailment of English liberty we owe to 
the hostility to the religion of our fathers; that reli- 
gion, during the dominance of which, there was al- 
ways a new House of Commons every time the Parlia- 
ment was assembled; that religion, along with which 
were bound up the people's civil and political rights* 
that religion, the followers of which, while it was pre- 
dominant, never heard of Parliaments for seven years 
or for three years or even for one year ; but who, as 
often as they saw a Parliament called, saw a Commons' 
House chosen for that one session, and for no more. 

419. After the passing of the Septennial Act, the 
people would, of course, lose nearly all the control that 
they had ever had with regard to the laying of taxes 
and to the expending of the public money. According- 
ly, taxes went on increasing prodigiously. The EX- 
CISE-SYSTEM, which had had a little beginning in 
former Protestant reigns, and the very name of which 

25* 



294 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

bad never been heard of in Catholic times, now assum- 
ed somewhat its present form; and the " castles" of En- 
glishmen became thenceforth things to be visited by ex- 
cisemen. Things went on in this way, until the reign of • 
George III., when, hy the means of "no-popery" wars, 
and other measures for u preserving the Protestant reli- 
gion as by to-established," the debt from t ,500,000/. 
had swelled up to 146,682,8442. The yearly interest 
of it had swelled up to 4,840,82 1 Z. which was about four 
times as much as the whole annual amount of the taxes 
in the reign of the Popish James II ! And the whole of 
the yearly taxes had swelled up to 8,744,6S2.Z That 
is to say, about eight times as much as James had raised 
early on this same " no-popery" people ! 

420. Now, though men will do much in the way of 
talk against u Popery " or against many other things; 
they are less zealous and active, when it comes to money,, 
The nation most sensibly felt the weight of these bur- 
dens; and the burdens received no alleviation from the 
circumstance of their being most righteously merited. 
The people looked back with aching hearts to former 
happy days; and the nobility and gentry began to per- 
ceive, with shame and fear, that already, their estates 
were beginning to pass quietly from them, (as Swift 
had told them they would,) into the hands of the 
Jews, Quakers, and other money-changers, created 
by the " no-popery" war, and by the scheme of the 
Scotchman, Burnet. But it was now too late to look 
back; and yet, to look forward to this certain, and not 
very slow ruin, was dreadful, and especially to men of an- 
cient family and by no means destitute of pride. Fain 
would they, even at that time, have applied a sponge to 
the score brought against them by Burnet's tribes. But 
this desire was effectually counteracted by the same 
motive which led to the creation of the debt; the neces- 
sity of embarking, and of keeping embarked, great mass- 
es of the money owners in the same boat with the Gov- 
ernment. 

421. In this dilemma, namely, the danger of touch- 
ing the interest of the debt, and the danger of continu- 
ing to pay that interest, a new scheme was resorted to, 
which, it was hoped would obviate both these dangers. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. £9£ 

It was, to tax the American colonies, and to throw a part, 
first, and perhaps the whole in the end, of the " no-po- 
pery" debt upon tlieir shoulders! Now, then, came 
" Reformation" the fourth, having for cause the mea- 
sures necessary to effect the u glorious revolution," tak- 
ing the principles and the manner of that revolution as 
its example in these respects, beginning with a " CON- 
VENTION," assembled without authority of king, par- 
liament, or people; proceeding with CHARGES against 
the king, with making it HIGH TREASON TO AD- 
HERE TO HIM; and ending with setting aside his au- 
thority, and extinguishing his rights and those of his fa- 
mily FOR EVER. Aye, but besides all this, bringing 
the first dawn of relief to the long-suffering Catholics of 
England, Scotland and Ireland! What it was that these 
our countrymen, had to suffer for the crime of ache-ring 
to the religion of their and our fathers, I shall leave to 
state further on; but 1 now proceed to show how this 
" reformation" the fourth commenced and proceeded. 

422. The Septennial gentlemen proceeded, at first, 
very slowly in their attempts to shift the pressure of the 
debt from their own shoulders to that of the Americans. 
They sent out tea to pay a tax ; they imposed a stamp 
duty on certain things in the colonies; but they had a 
clever, a sharp-sighted, and a most cool and resolute and 
brave people to deal with. The Americans had seen debts , 
and funds, and taxation, and abject submission, creep, by 
slow degrees, over the people of England; and they resol- 
ved to resist at once, the complicated curse. The money- 
people there were not like those in England, the owners 
of stock and funds. They were not, as the money-peo- 
ple of England were, embarked in the same boat with the 
government: if they had, there would have been more 
hesitation on the subject of resistance; if they had been 
entangled in Burnet's artful web, the Americans might 
at this day, have been hardly known in the world; might 
have been a parcel of bands of poor devils doomed to 
toil for haughty and insolent masters. Happily for them 
the Scotch Bishop's deadly trammels had not reached 
them; and therefore, they at once resolved not to sub* 
mit to the septennial commands. 



%M PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 






423. It is curious enough that they should, as the 
glorious" people had done, call themselves WHIGS! 

But the Septennial people were Whigs too; so that there 
were now Whigs resisting Whigs. A Whig means in 
England, one who approves of the setting of James and 
his heirs aside. A Whig means in America, one who 
approves of the setting of George and his heirs 
aside. The English Whigs called a convention ; so did 
those of America. The English Whigs published a de- 
claration, containing, as we have seen in paragraph 37 9, 
CHARGES against James: so did those of America 
against George. The charges against James were 
twelve in number. This is a favorite number with Whigs; 
for the American Whigs had twelve charges against 
George. We have seen, in paragraph 379, what Pro- 
testants accused a Popish king of; and it is but fair for 
us to see what Protestants and Catholics too accused a 
Protestant king of. Blackstone, in justifying the "glo- 
rious" affair took care to say, that the like was never to 
take place again ; and the Septennial gentlemen declar- 
ed, and I think, enacted, that the king in future, (being, 
of course, a Protestant,) could do no wrong. Now, the 
Americans seemed to think it hard, that they should 
thus be positively forbidden to do what was so "glori- 
ous" in Englishmen. Blackstone had told them, that, 
to justify another revolution, all the same circumstances 
must exist; not a part of them, but the whole of them. 
The king must not only endeavour to subvert the laws; 
The must not only commit acts of tyranny; but he must be 
a Catholic, and must have a design to overthrow the Pro- 
testant religion; and he must, into the bargain, have ab- 
dicated his authority by going out of the kingdom. So 
that, according to this lawyer, there never could, by 
any possibility, be a " glorious" revolution again, seeing 
that two essential circumstances must, in any future case, 
be wanting, as no Catholic was ever to be king again,, 
and as no king was ever to do wrong any more. 

424. But, alas! these American Whigs did not listen 
to Blackstone, though he had talked so piously about 
the " dark ages of monkish ignorance and superstition" 
They thought, nay they said, that a Protestant king 
might do wrong, and had done wrong. They thought^ 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 297 

or at least, they said, that a king might abdicate his au- 
thority, not only without going out of the country, but 
also without ever having been in it ! In short they drew 
up, a la "glorious" charges against their Protestant 
king, his late Majesty; and as the charges against James 
II. are found in an Act of Parliament, so the charges 
against George III. are found in an Act of Congress, 
passed on the memorable 4th of July, 1776. These 
charges were as follows: — 

425. " The history of the present King of Great 
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, 
all having in direct object the establishment of an abso- 
lute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts 
be submitted to a candid world. 

" I. He has refused to pass laws for the accommoda- 
tion of large districts of people, unless those peo- 
ple would relinquish the right of representation in 
the Legislature — a right inestimable to them, and 
formidable to tyrants only. 

" II. He has called the legislative bodies at places urr- 
jjsual, uncomfortable, and distant from the reposi- 
tory of their public records, for the sole purpose of 
fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

" III. He has dissolved representative houses repeated- 
ly, for opposing with firmness his invasions on the 
rights of the people. 

" IV. He has obstructed the administration of justice^ 
by refusing his assent to laws for establishing ju- 
diciary powers. 

" V. He has made judges dependent on his will alone $ 
for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and 
payment of their salaries. 

"VI. He has created a multitude of neio offices, and 
sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people^ 
and eat their substance. 

"VII. He has kept among us, in times of peace^ 
standing armies, without the consent of our legisla- 



lb PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

"VIII. He has affected to render the military inde- 
pendent of, and superior to, civil power. 

" IX. He has combined with others to subject us to 
a jurisdiction foreign to oar constitution, and un- 
acknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to 
their acts of pretended legislation. 



" X. He has imposed taxes on us without our consent. 

a XII. He has deprived us, in many cases, of the 
benefits of trial by jury. He has ABDICATED 
government here, by declaring us out of his pro- 
tection, and waging war against us. In every 
stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for 
redress in the most humble terms: our repeated pe- 
titions have been answered by repeated injury. A 
prince whose character is thus marked by every act 
which define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a 
free people. 

426. Now, justice to the memory of the late King 
demands, that we expressly assert, that here are some 
most monstrous exaggerations, and especially at the 
close; but, does not that same justice demand! of us, 
then, to be cautious how we . give full credit to the 
eharges made against James II.? However, the ques- 
tion with us, at the present moment, is, not whether the 
grounds of one of these revolutions were better than 
those of the other; but, whether the last revolution 
grew directly out of the former; and of the affirmative 
of this question, no man, who has read this Number, can ? 
I think, entertain a doubt. . 

427. I should now proceed to show, that the French 
Revolution, or " Reformation" the fifth, grew imme- 
diately out of the American Revolution; and then to 
sum up the consequences ; but I am at the end of my pa- 
per, 






JROTESTANT REFORMATION. 2t)% 

LETTER XV. 

American "Reformation" brought relief to 
Catholics. 

Persecutions up to Reign of James II. 

Law-Church opposes Liberty of Conscience. 

Horrible Penal Code. 

Softened, at last, from motives of Fear. 

French Revolution produces a Second soften- 
ing of the Code. 

Penal Code, as it now stands. 

Result of the " Reformation 7 ' as far as re* 
lates to Religion. 



Kensington, 31 st January, 1826. 
My Friends, 

428. We have now traced the " Reformation," i» 
its deeds, down from the beginning, in the reign of 
Henry VIIL, to the American Revolution ; and, all that 
remains is, to follow it along through the French Revo- 
lution, and unto the present day. This is what I pro- 
pose to do in the present Number. In the next Num- 
ber I shall bring under one view, my proofs of this pro- 
position; namely, that, before the event called the " Re- 
formation," England was more powerful and more 
wealthy, and that the people were more free, more moral,, 
better fed and better clad, than at any time since that 
event. And, when I have done that, I shall in the con- 
cluding Number, give a List of all abbies, priories^ 
and other parcels of property, which according to Mag- 
na Charta, belonged to the Church and the poor, and 
which were seized on by the Reformation- people. I 
shall range these under the heads of Counties, and 
shall give the names of the parties, to whom they were 
granted by the confiscators. 

429. The American Revolution, which, as we have 
seen, grew directly out of those measures which had 
been adopted in England to crush the Catholics and to 
extinguish their religion for ever, did, at its very outset, 
produce good to those same Catholics, by inducing the 



$00 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

English government to soften, for the sake of its own $aje- 
ty, that PENAL CODE, by which they had so long 
been scourged. . But, now, before we speak of the im- 
mediate cause, and of the manner and degree of this 
softening, we must have a sketch of this HORRIBLE 
CODE; this monster in legislation, surpassing, in vio- 
lation of the dictates of humanity and justice, any thing 
else that the world has ever seen existing under the 
name of law. 

430. We have seen how cruelly the Catholics were 
treated under "good Queen Bess" and James I.; we 
have seen how they were fined, mulcted, robbed, pil- 
laged, and punished in body; but, though the penal code 
against them was then such as to make every just man 
shudder with horror, we think it, then, gentleness, 
when we look at its subsequent ferocity. We have seen 
how Catholics were fined, harassed, hunted, robbed., 
pillaged, in the reign of " good Bess." We have seen 
the same in the reign of her immediate successor, with 
this addition, that Englishmen were then handed over 
to be pillaged by Scotchmen. We have seen, that 
Charles I., for whom they afterwards fought against 
Cromwell, treated them as cruelly as the two former. 
We have seen Charles II. most ungratefully abandon 
them to the persecutions of the church by law estab- 
lished; and, during this reign we have seen that the 
Protestants had the baseness, and the king the mean- 
ness, to suffer the lying inscription to be put on the 
Monument on Fish-street Hill, in the city of London, 
though Lord Clarendon, (whose name the law church 
holds in so much honour,) in that work which the Uni- 
versity of Oxford publishes at the " Clarendon Press," 
expressly says, (p. 348, continuation,) that a Committee 
of the House of Commons, " who were very diligent 
u and solicitous to make the discovery, never were able 
" to find any probable evidence, that there was any other 
"cause of that woful fire, than the displeasure of 
" Almighty God." What, infamy, then, to charge the 
" Catholics with it; what an infamy to put the lying in- 
scription on the pillar; what an act of justice in James 
II., to efface it; what a shame to William to suffer it to 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 391 

be restored; and what is it to us, then, who now suffer* 
it to remain, without petitioning for its erasure! 

431. But it was after James II. was set aside, that 
the PENAL CODE grew really horrible. And here 
it is of the greatest consequence to the cause of truth, 
that we trace this code to its real authors; namely, the 
Clergy of the Established Church. This is evident 
enough throughout the whole of this Church's history; 
but, until the reign of James II., the sovereign was of 
the Church religion ; so that the persecutions appeared 
to come from him, or her. But now, when the King 
was for softening the penal code; when the King was for 
toleration ; now the world saw who were the real perse- 
cutors ; and this is a matter to be fully explained and 
understood, before we come to a more minute account 
of the code, and to the causes which finally led to its, 
in great part, abolition. 

432. James II. wished to put an end to the penal 
code; he wished for general toleration ; he issued a 
proclamation, suspending all penal laws relating to reli- 
gion, and GRANTING A GENERAL LIBERTY OF 
CONSCIENCE TO ALL HIS SUBJECTS. This 
was his OFFENCE. For this he and his family were 
SET ASIDE FOR EVER! No man can deny this. 
The clergy of the Church set themselves against 
him. Six of the bishops presented to him an insolent 
petition against the exercise of this his prerogative, en- 
joyed and exercised by all Ids predecessors. They led 
the way in that opposition, which produced the "glo- 
rious revolution." and they were the most active and 
most bitter of all the foes of that unfortunate king, 
whose only real offence was his wishing to give liberty 
of conscience to all his subjects, and, by showing respect 
to whose mortal remains, (displaced by the Frenck 
revolutionists,) our present King has done himself very 
great honour. 

433. Now, we are going to see a sketch of this ter- 
rible code. It must be a mere sketch; two hundred 
Numbers like this would not contain the whole of it. 
It went on increasing in bulk and in cruelty, from the 
coronation of Elizabeth till nearly twenty years after 
Ckat of George III., till events came, as we shall see,.. 



S02 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

and broke it up. It consisted, at last, of more than a 
hundred $cts of Parliament, all made for the express 
purpose of punishing men, because, and only because,. 
they continued faithfully to adhere to the religion, in 
which out as well as their fathers had lived and died?, 
during a period of nine hundred years ! The code dif- 
fered, in some respects, in its application with regard 
to England and Ireland respectively. 

434. IN ENGLAND this code, I., stripped the 
peers of their hereditary right to sit in Parliament; II., 
It stripped the gentlemen of their right to be chosen 
Members of the Commons' House; III., It took from 
all, the right to vote at elections, and, though Magna 
Charta says, that no man shall be taxed without his 
own consent, it double-taxed every man who refused to 
abjure his religion, and thus become an apostate ; IV., 
It shut them out from all offices of power and trust, 
even the most insignificant; V., It took from them the 
right of presenting to livings in the Church, though that 
sight was given to Quakers and Jews ; VI., It fined them 
at the rate of 20/. a month for keeping away from that 
Church, to go to which they deemed apostacy; VII., 
It disabled them from keeping arms in their houses for 
their defence, from maintaining suits at law, from being 
guardians or executors, from practising in law or phy- 
sic, from travelling five miles from their houses, and all 
these under heavy penalties in case of disobedience; 
VIII., If a married woman kept away from Church, 
she forfeited two-thirds of her dower, she could not be 
executrix to her husband, and might, during her hus- 
band's life-time, be imprisoned, unless ransomed by him 
at 10Z. a month; IX., It enabled any four justices of the 
peace, in case a man had been convicted of not going 
to church, to call him before them, to compel him to 
abjure his religion, or, if he refused, to sentence him to 
baiusnment for life, (without judge or jury,) and, if he 
returned, he was to suffer death ; X., It enabled any 
two justices of the peace to call before them, without 
any information, any man that they chose, above sixteen 
years of age, and if such mail refused to abjure the 
Catholic reigion, and continued in his refu-al for six 
months, he was rendered incapable of possessing laud. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 303 

and any land, the possession of which might belong to 
him, came into the possession of the next Protestant 
heir, who was not obliged to account for any profits; 
XL, It made such man incapable of purchasing lands, 
and all contracts made by him, or for him, were null 
and void; XII., It imposed a fine of 10/. a month for em- 
ploying a Catholic schoolmaster in a private family, and 
%l a day on the schoolmaster so employed; XIII., It im- 
posed 100/. fine for sending a child to a Catholic for- 
eign school, and the child so sent was disabled from 
ever inheriting, purchasing, or enjoying lands, or profits, 
goods, debts, legacies, or sums of money; XIV., It 
punished the saying of mass by a fine of 120/., and the 
hearing of mass with a fine of GO/.; XV., Any Catholic 
priest, who returned from beyond the seas, and who did 
not abjure his religion in three days afterwards, and al- 
so any person who returned to the Catholic faith, or pro- 
cured another to return to it, this merciless, this sanguin- 
ary code, punished with hanging, ripping out of bowels 
-and quartering. 

435., In IRELAND the code was still more feroci- 
ous, more hideously bloody; for, in the first place, all 
the cruelties of the English code had, as the work of a 
few hours, a few strokes of the pen, in one single act, 
been inflicted on unhappy Ireland; and, then, IN AD- 
DITION, the Irish code contained, amongst many other 
violations of all the. laws of justice and humanity, the 
following twenty most savage punishments. I. A Catho- 
lic schoolmaster, private or public, or even usher to a 
Protestant, was punished with imprisonment, banish- 
ment, and finally as a felon.- — II. The Catholic clergy 
were not allowed to be in the country, withbut being- 
registered and kept as a sort of prisoners at large, and 
rewards were given, (out of the revenue raised in part on 
[he Catholics,) for discovering them, 50/ for an archbish- 
op, or bishop, 20/. for a priest, and 10/. for a schoolmas- 
ter or usher. — III. Jlny two justices of the peace might; 
call before them any Catholic, order him to declare, on 
oath, where and when he heard mass, who were present, 
and the name and residence of any priest or schoolmas- 
ter that he might know of; and, if he refused to obey 
this inhumane inquisition, they had power to condemn 



304 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

him, (without judge or jury,) to a year's imprisonment %$i 
a felon's gaol, or to pay 201. — IV. No Catholic could 
purchase any manors, nor even hold under a lease for 
more than thirty-one years. — V. Any Protestant, if he 
suspected any one of holding' property intrust for a Ca- 
tholic, or of being concerned in any sale, lease, mort- 
gage, or other contract, for a Catholic; any Protestant 
thus suspecting, might file a bill against the suspected 
trustee, and take the estate, or property, from him. — 
VI. Any Protestant seeing a Catholic a tenant of a farm, 
the produce of which farm exceeded the amount of the 
rent by more than one-third, might disposses the Catho- 
lic, and enter on Ms lease in his stead. — VII. Any Pro- 
testant seeing a Catholic with a horse worth more than 
five pounds, might take the horse away from him upon 
tendering him five pounds. — VIII. In order to prevent the 
smallest chance of justice in these and similar cases, none 
but known Protestants were to be jurymen in the trial 
of any such cases. — IX. Horses of Catholics might be 
seized for the use of the militia; and, besides this, Ca- 
tholics were compelled to pay double towards the militia, 
X. Merchants, whose ships and goods might be taken 
by privateers, during a war with a Catholic Prince^ 
were to be compensated for their losses by a levy on the 
goods and lands of Catholics only, though, mind, Catho- 
lics were at the same time, impressed, and compelled to t 
shed their blood in the war against that same Catholic 
prince. — XI. Property of a Protestant, whose heirs at 
taw were Catholics, was to go to the nearest Protestant 
relation, just the same as if the Catholic heirs had been 
dead, though the property might be entailed on them. — 
XII. If there were no Protestant heir ; then, in order to 
break up all Catholic families, the entail and all heirship 
were set aside, and the property was divided, share and 
xhare alike, amongst all the Catholic heirs.- — XIII. If a 
Protestant had an estate in Ireland, he was forbidden to 
marry a Catholic, in, or out, of Ireland. — XIV. All mar- 
riages between Protestants and Catholics were annull- 
ed, though many children might have proceeded from 
them. — XV. Every priest, who celebrated a marriage be- 
tween a Catholic and a Protestant, or between two Pro- 
testant, was condemned to be hanged. — XVI. A Catholic 



: 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 305 

father could not be guardian to, or have the custody of, 
his own child, if the child, however young, pretended to be 
a Protestant; but the child was taken from its own father, 
and put into the custody of a Protestant relation. — XVII. 
If any child of a Catholic became a Protestant, the parent 
was to be instantly summoned, and to be made to declare, 
upon oath, the full value of his or her property of all 
sorts, and then the Chancery was to make such distribu- 
tion of the property as it thought fit. — XVIII. " Wives 
be obedient unto your own husbands," says the great 
Apostle. " Wives be disobedient to them, 1 ' said this 
horrid code; for, if the wife of a Catholic chose to turn 
Protestant, it set aside the will of the husband, and 
made her a participator in all his possessions, in spite 
of him, however immoral, however bad a wife or bad a 
mother she might have been. — XIX. " Honour thy fa- 
ther and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land 
which the Lord, thy God, giveth thee?'' " Dishonour 
them," said this savage code; for, if any one of the sons 
of a Catholic father became a Protestant; this son was 
to possess all the father had, and the father could not 
sell, could not mortgage, could not leave legacies, or 
portions, out of his estate, by whatever title he might- 
hold it, even though it might have been the fruit of his 
own toil. — XX. Lastly, (of this score, but this is only a 
part,) " the Church, as by law established, 5 ' was in her 
great indulgence, pleased not only to open her doors, 
but to award, (out of the taxes,) thirty pounds a yearjor 
life to any Catholic priest, who would abjure his reli- 
gion and declare his belief in her si 

436. Englishmen, is there a man, a single man, bear- 
ing that name, whose blood will not chill at this recital; 
who, when he reflects that these barbarities w r ere inflict- 
ed on men, because, and only because, they adhered 
with fidelity to the faith of their and our fathers; to the 
faith of Alfred, the founder of our nation; to the faith 
of the authors of Magna Charta, and of all those vene- 
rable institutions of which we so justly boast; who, when 
he thus reflects, andwdienhe, being, as I am, a Protest- 
ant of the Church of England, further reflects, that, all 
these cruelties were inflicted for the avowed purpose of 
giving and preserving predominance to that Churcn, will 
26* 



30b PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

not, with me, not only feel deep sorrow and shame for 
the past, but heartily join me in best endeavours to cause 
justice 'to be done to the sufferers for the time to come? 
437. As to the injustice, as to the barbarity, as to 
the flagrant immorality, of the above code, they call 
for no comment, being condemned by the spontaneous 
voice of nature herself; but in this shocking assemblage, 
there are two things which impel us to ask, whether 
the love of truth, whether a desire to eradicate religiuos 
error, could have formed any part, however small, of 
the motives of these punishers? These two things are, 
the reward offered to Catholic priests to induce them 
to come over to our church; and the terrible means 
made use of to prevent the intermarriage of Catholics and 
Protestants. Could these measures ever have suggested 
themselves to the minds of men, who sincerely believed 
that the Church religion was supported by arguments 
more cogent than those by which the Catholic religion 
was supported? The Law Church had all the powers, 
all the honours, all the emoluments, all the natural 
worldly allurements. These she continually held out to 
all who were disposed to the clerical order. And if, 
in addition to all these, she had felt strong in argument, 
would she have found it necessary to offer, in direct 
and barefaced words, a specific sum of money to any one 
who would join her; and that, too, when the pensioned 
convert, must, as she well knew, break his solemn vow, 
in order to be entitled to the pay? And, as to intermar- 
riages, why not suffer them, why punish them so se- 
verely, why annul them if the Law-Church were sure 
that the arguments in her favour were the most cogent and 
convincing ? Who has so much power over the mind of 
woman as her husband? Who over man as his wife? 
Would one persuade the other to a change of religion? 
Very likely. One would convert the other in nineteen 
cases out of twenty. That passion which had subdued 
religious prejudices, would in almost every case, make 
both the parties of the same religion. But, what had 
the Law-Church to object to this, if she were sure that 
hers was the true faith; if she were sure that the 
Arguments for her were more clear than those for her 
opponent; if she were mre that every one who really 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 3Cfi 

loved another, who was beloved by that other, and be- 
longed to her communion, would easily persuade that 
other to join in that communion? What, in short, had 
she, if quite sure of all this, to fear from intermarriages? 
And, if NOT QUITE SURE of all this, what, I ask 
you, sensible and just Englishmen, what had she to 
plead in justification of the inhuman penal code! 

438. talk of the "fires in Smithfield!" Fires, in- 
deed, which had no justification, and which all the Ca- 
tholics severely condemn: but what, good God! was 
the death of about two hundred and seventy-seven per- 
sons, however cruel and unmerited that death, to the tor- 
ments above described, inflicted, for more than two 
hundred years, on millions upon millions of people, to 
say nothing about the thousands upon thousands of Ca- 
tholics, who were, during that period, racked to death^ 
killed in prison, hanged, bowelled, and quartered ! Be- 
sides, let it never be forgotten, that the punishments in 
Smithfield were for the purpose of reclaiming ; for the 
purpose of making examples of a few, who set at nought 
the religion of their fathers and that in which they them- 
selves had been born. And, if these punishments were 
unjust and cruel, as all men agree that they were, what 
shall we say of, how shall we express sufficient abhor- 
rence of, the above penal code, which was for the pun- 
ishment, not of a few, but of millions of people; or the 
punishment, not of those who had apostatized from the 
religion of their fathers, but of those who, to their utter 
worldly ruin, adhered to that religion? If we find no 
justification, and none, we all say, there was, for the 
punishments of Mary's reign, inflicted, as all men know 
they were, on very few persons, and those persons not 
only apostates from the faith of their fathers, but also, 
for the most part, either notorious traitors, or felons, 
and, at the very least, conspirators against, or most au- 
dacious insulters of the royal authority and the persoa 
of the queen; if we find no justification, and we all 
agree that there was none, for these punishments, in- 
flicted, as all men know they were, during a few months 
of furious and unreflecting zeal, just after the quelling 
of a dangerous rebellion, which had clearly proved that 
apostate and conspirator were one and the same, and 



308 Protestant reformation. 

had led to the hasty conclusion, that the apostacy must 
be extirpated, or that it would destroy the throne: if we 
find, even under such circumstances, no justification for 
these punishments, where are we to look for, not for a 
justification, but for a ground of qualification of our ab- 
horrence of the above-mentioned barbarities of more 
than two hundred years, inflicted on millions upon mil- 
lions of people; barbarities premeditated in the absence 
of all provocation; contrived and adopted in all the 
calmness of legislative deliberation; executed in cold 
blood, and persevered in for ages in defiance of the ad- 
monitions of conscience; barbarities inflicted, not on 
apostates, but on those who refused to apostatize; not 
on felons, conspirators, and rebels, but on innocent per- 
sons, on those who had, under all and every circum- 
stance, even while feeling the cruel lash of persecution, 
been as faithful to their king as to their God; and, as if 
we were never to come to the end of the atrocity, all 
this done, too, with regard to Ireland, in flagrant breach 
of a solemn treaty with the English king ! 

439. And, is this the " tolerant, the mild, the meek 
Church, as by law established?" Have we here the 
proofs of Protestant faith and good works? Was it 
thus that St. Austin and St. Patrick introduced, and 
that St. Swithin and Alfred and William of Wickham 
inculcated the religion of Christ ? Was it out of 
works like these, that the cathedrals and the palaces 
and the universities, and the laws and the courts of 
justice arose? What! punish men for retaining the 
faith of their fathers; inflict all sorts of insults and 
cruelties on them for not having become apostates; 
put them, because they were Catholics, out of the pro- 
tection of all the laws that their and our Catholic an- 
cestors had framed for the security of their children; 
call their religion " idolatrous and damnable" treat 
them as obstinate idolaters, while your Church-Calen- 
dar contains none but saints of that very religion; boast 
of your venerable institutions, all of Catholic origin, 
while you insult, pillage, scourge, hunt from the face of 
the earth, the true and faithful adherents to the faith of 
the authors of those institutions? "Aye," the perse* 
cutors seem to have answered, " and hunt them we mll n 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

But why, then, if religion be your motive; if your bar- 
barities arise from a desire to convert men from error; 
why be so lenient to Quakers and Jews ; why not only 
not punish, but suffer them even to appoint parsons to 
your Churches ? Ah ! my friends, the Z,aw-Church had 
taken no tithes and lands, and others- had taken no ah- 
bies and the like, from Quakers and Jews ! Here was 
the real foundation of the whole of that insatiable ran- 
cour, which went on from 1 558 to 1 778, producing to 
millions of innocent people, torment, added to torment, 
and which seemed to have resolved to be satisfied with 
nothing short of the total extermination of its victims. 

440. But, now, all of a sudden, in 1 778, the face of 
things began to change ; the Church, as by laic estab- 
lished, was, all at once, thought capable of existing in 
safety, with a great relaxation of the penal code ! And, 
without even asking it, the Catholics found the code 
suddenly softened, by divers Acts of Parliament, in 
both countries, and especially in Ireland! This hu- 
manity and generostiy will surprise us; we shall wonder 
whence it came; we shall be ready to believe the souls 
of the parties to have been softened by a sort of mi- 
racle, until we look back to paragraphs 424 and 425. 
There we see the real cause of this surprising humani- 
ty and generosity; there we see the Americans un- 
furling the standard of independence, and, having been 
backed by France, pushing on towards success, and, 
thereby, setting an example to every oppressed people, 
in every part of the world, unhappy, trodden down 
Ireland not excepted ! There was, too, before the end 
of the war, danger of invasion on the part of France, 
who was soon joined in the war by Spain and Holland; 
so that, before the close of the contest, the Catholics 
had obtained leave to breathe the air of their native 
country in safety; and, though, as an Englishman, I 
deeply lament, that this cost England her right arm, 
I most cordially rejoice in contemplating the event, 
Thus was fear gratified, in a moment, at the very first 
demand, with a surrender of that, which had, for ages 
been refused to the incessant pleadings of justice and 
humanity; and thus the American revolution, which* 
as we have seen, grew immediately out of the "»a> 



310 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

popery," or " glorious," revolution in England, whick 
latter was, as we have clearly seen, made for the ex- 
press purpose of extinguishing the Catholic religion for 
ever ; thus was this very event the cause of the begin- 
ning of a cessation of the horrible persecutions of 
those, who had, with fidelity wholly without a paral- 
lel, adhered to that religion ! 

441. This great event was soon followed by anoiher 
still greater; namely, the French Revolution, or 
" Reformation" the fifth. Humiliation greater than 
the English Government had to endure, in the above 
event, it is difficult to conceive; but the French Revo- 
lution taught the world what " Reformations" can do, 
when pushed to their full and natural extent. In Eng- 
land the " Reformation" contented itself with plunder- 
ing the convents and the poor of their all, and the sec- 
ular clergy in part. But, in France, they took the 
whole ; though we ought to mark well this difference ; 
that, in France, they applied this whole to the use of 
the public; a bad use, perhaps; but, to public use they 
applied the whole of the plunder; while, in England, 
the plunder was scrambled for, and remained divided 
amongst individuals. 

442. Well; but, here was a great triumph for the 
clergy of the " church as by law established?" TJiey 7 
above all men, must have hailed with delight the deeds 
of the French "Reformation ?" No: but, on the con- 
trary, were amongst the foremost in calling for war to 
put down that "Reformation!" What! Not like this 
" Reformation!" Why, here were convents broken up, 
and monks and nuns dispersed; here were abbey-lands 
confiscated; here was the Catholic religion abolish- 
ed, here were Catholic priests hunted about and put 
to death in almost as savage a manner as those of 
England had been; here were laws, seemingly trans- 
lated from our own code, against saying or hearing mass, 
and against priests returning into the kingdom; here 
was a complete annihilation, (as far as legislative pro- 
visions could go,) of that which our church clergy call- 
ed " idolatrous and damnable ;" here was a new religion 
" established by law ;" and, that no feature might be de- 
fective in the likeness, here was a royal family set askte 



tROTESTANT REFORMATION. 31 1 

by law for ever, by what they called a " glorious" revo- 
lution;" and there would have been an abdicating king, 
but he was, by mere accident, stopped in his flighty 
brought back, and put to death, not, however, without 
an example to plead in the deeds of the English double- 
distiiied Protestant " Reformation" people. 

443. What! Can it be true, that our church -clergy 
did not like this French " Reformation f n And that, 
they urged on war against the men, who had sacked 
convents, killed priests, and abolished that which was 
"idolatrous and damnable?" Can it be true, that they 
who rose against King James because he wanted to 
give Catholics liberty of conscience ; that they, who up- 
held the horrid penal code, in order to put down the 
Catholic religion in England and Ireland; can it be true, 
that they wanted war. to put down the men, who had put 
down that religion m France? Aye, aye! But these men 
had put down all TITHES too! Aye, and all bishop- 
ricks, and deaneries, and prebendaries, and all fat bene- 
fices and pluralities ! And, if they were permitted to do 
this with impunity, OTHERS might be tempted to do 
the same! Well, but, gentlemen of the to-church, 
though they were wicked fellows for doing this, still 
this was better than to sutler to remain, that which you 
always told us was " idolatrous and damnable" " Yes, 
" yes; but, then, these men established, by law, ATHE- 
" ISM, and not Church-of-England Christianity." Now^ 
in the first place, they saw about forty sorts of Protest- 
ant religion; they knew that thirty-nine of them must be 
false ; they had seen our rulers make a church by law P 
just such an one as they pleased; they had seen them 
alter it by law : and, if there were no standard of faith; 
no generally acknowledged authority ; if English law- 
makers were to change the sort of religion at their plea- 
sure ; why, pray, were not French law-makers to do 
the same? If English law-makers could take the spirit- 
ual supremacy from the successor of Saint Peter, and 
give it to Henry-the-wife-killer, why might not 
the French give theirs to Lepeau? Besides, as to the 
sort of religion, though Atheism is bad enough, could 
at be WORSE than what you tell us is " idolatrous and 
damnable?" It might cause people to be damned* but. 



$12 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

could it cause them to be more than damned? Alas! 
there remains only the abolition of the TITHES and of 
the FAT CLERICAL POSTS, as a valid objection, 
on your part, against " Reformation'' the FIFTH; and, 
I beg the nation to remember, that the war against it has 
left us to pay, for ever, the interest of a debt, created by 
that war, of seven hundred millions of pounds sterling, a 
war which we never should have seen, if we had never 
seen that which is called a " Reformation." 

444. The French Revolution, though it caused nu- 
merous horrid deeds to be committed, produced, in its 
progress and in its end, a great triumph for the Catho- 
lics. It put the fidelity of the Catholic priests and the 
Protestant pastors to the test ; and, while not one of the 
former was ever seen to save his life by giving up his 
faith, all the latter did it without hesitation. It showed, 
at last, the people of a great kingdom returning to the 
Catholic worship by choice; when they might have 
been, and may now be, Protestants, without the loss of 
any one right, immunity, or advantage, civil or military. 
But the greatest good that it produced fell to the lot of 
ill-treated Ireland. The revolutionists were powerful, 
they were daring; they, in 1793, cast their eyes on Ire- 
land ; and now, for the second time, a softening of th$ 
penal code took place, making a change which no man 
living ever expected to see ! Those who had been consid- 
ered as almost beneath dogs, were now made capable 
of being MAGISTRATES; and now, amongst many 
other acts of generosity, we saw established, at the pub- 
lic expense, a COLLEGE for the education of Catho- 
lics exclusively, thus doing, by law, that which the law- 
givers had before made HIGH TREASON! Ah! But, 
there were the French, with an army of four hundred 
thousand men; and there were the Irish people, who 
must have been something more, or less, than men, if 
their breasts did not boil with resentment. Alas! that 
it should be said of England, that the Irish have never 
appealed with success but to her fears! 

445. And, shall this always be said? Shall it ever 
be said again? Shall we not now, by sweeping away 
for ever every vestige of this once horrible and still 
oppressive code, reconcile ourselves to our long ill- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 313 

floated brethren and to our own consciences? The 
code is still a penal code: it is still a just ground of 
complaint: it has still disqualifications that are greatly 
■njurious, and distinctions that are odious and insulting. 
1. It still shuts Catholic peers out of those seats, in the 
House of Lords, which are their hereditary right; and 
Catholic gentlemen out of the House of Commons. II. 
Then, as if caprice were resolved not to be behind 
hand with injustice, this code, which allows Catholic 
freeholders, in Ireland, to vote at elections, for mem- 
bers of the parliament of the now " united kingdom," 
refuses that right to all Catholics in England! III. It 
excludes Catholics from all corporations. IV. It ex- 
cludes them from all offices under the government, in 
England, but admits them to inferior offices in Ireland. 
V. It takes from them the right of presenting to any ec- 
clesiastical benefice, though Quakers and Jews are al- 
lowed to enjoy that right! VI. It prevents them from 
endowing any school, or college, for educating children 
in the Catholic religion; and this, too, while there is 
now, by law established, a college, for this very pur- 
pose, supported out of the taxes! Here is consistency; 
and here is, above all things, sincerity! What, main- 
rain, out of the taxes, a college to teach exclusively 
that religion, which you call u idolatrous and damnablel" 
Vil. This code still forbids Catholic priests to appear 
in their canonical habiliments, except in their chapels, 
or in private houses; and it forbids the Catholic rites to 
be performed in any building which has a steeple or bells! 
What! forbid the use of steeples and bells to that reli- 
gion, which created all the steeples and all the bells; 
that built and endowed all the churches, all the magni- 
ficent cathedrals, and both the Universities! And,ivhy 
this insulting, this galling, prohibition?. Why so sedu- 
lous to keep the symbols of this worship out of the 
sight of the people ? Why, gentle laio-church, if your 
features be so lovely as you say they are, and if those 
of your rival present, as you say they do, a mass of dis- 
gusting deformity; why, if this be the case, are you, 
who are the most gentle, amiable, and beautiful church 
that law ever created; why, I say, are you so anxious to 
keep your rival out of sight ? Nay, and out of hear- 
27 



314 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

ing, too! What? gentle and all-persuasive and only 
true law-church, whose parsons and bishops are suck 
able preachers, and mostly married men into the bar- 
gain, what are you afraid of from the steeples and bells r 
if used by Catholics? One would think, that the more 
people went to witness the " idolatrous" exhibitions, the 
better you would like it. Alas ! gentle and lovely to- 
church, there are not now in the kingdom many men, so 
brutishly ignorant as not to see the real motives for this 
uncommonly decent prohibition. VIII. It forbids a 
Catholic priest in Ireland to be guardian to any child, 
IX. It forbids Catholic laymen in Ireland, to act in the 
capacity of guardian to the children, or a child, of any 
Protestant. X. It forbids every Catholic in Ireland to 
have arms in his house, unless he have a freehold of ten 
pounds a year, or 30QZ. in personal property. XI. It 
disables Irish Catholics from voting at vestries on ques- 
tions relating to the repair of the church, though they 
are compelled to pay for those repairs. XII. Lastly, 
in Ireland, this code still inflicts death, or at least, a 
500/. penalty, on the Catholic priest, who celebrates a 
marriage between two Protestants, or between a Pro- 
testant and a Catholic. Some of the judges have de- 
cided, that it is death ; others, that it is the pecuniary 
penalty. Death, or money, however, the public papers 
have recently announced to us, that such a marriage has 
now been openly celebrated m Dublin, between the pre- 
sent Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,(w1io must be a Pro- 
testant,) and a Catholic Lady of the late rebellious 
American States! So that, all put together, Dublin exhi- 
bits, at this moment, a tolerably curious scene: a College 
established by law, for the teaching of that religion, which 
our Church regards as " idolatrous and damnable," and 
to be guilty of teaching which was, only a few years 
ago, hightreason! A Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who 
must belong to our Church, and who must have taken 
an oath protesting against the Catholic supremacy, ta- 
king to his arms a Catholic wife, who must adhere to 
that supremacy! Then comes a Catholic priest, mar- 
rying this pair, in the face of two unrepealed laws, one 
of which condemns him to death for the act, and the 
other of which condemns him to pay a fine of five hun- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 315 

tired pounds f And, lastly, comes, as the public prints 
tell us, a, complimentary letter, on the occasion, to the 
bridegroom, on the part, and in the hand- writing, of the 
King ! 

446. Well, then, is this code, is any fragment of it, 
longer to continue? Is it to continue now, when all idea 
of conversion to Protestantism is avowedly abandoned, 
and when it is notorious that the Catholic faith has, in 
spite of ages of persecution, done more than maintain 
its ground? Are peers still to be cut off from their 
hereditary rights and honours; are gentlemen to be 
shut out of the Commons 7 House; are lawyers to be 
stopped in their way to the bench; are freeholders and 
free-men to be deprived of their franchises; are the 
whole to lie under a stigma, which it is not in human 
nature should fail to fill them with resentment; and all 
this, because they adhere to the religion of their and 
our fathers, and a religion too, to educate youth in 
which, exclusively, there is now a college supported 
out of the taxes? Is all this great body of men, form* 
ing one-third part of the whole of the people of this 
kingdom, containing men of all ranks, from the peer 
to the labourer, to continue to be thus insulted, thus in- 
jured, thus constantly irritated, constantly impelled to 
wish for distress, danger, defeat, and disgrace to their 
native country, as affording the only chance of their 
obtaining justice? And are we, merely to gratify the 
Laiv-Church by upholding her predominance, still to 
support, in peace, a numerous and most expensive 
army; still to be exposed, in war, to the danger of see- 
ing co?icession come too late, and to all those conse- 
quences, the nature and extent of which it makes one 
shudder to think of? 

447. Here, then, we are, at the end of three hundred 
years from the day when Henry VIII. began the work 
of " Reformation:" here we are, after passing through 
scenes of plunder and of blood, such as the world 
never beheld before: here we are, with these awful 
questions still before us; and here we are, too, with 
forty sorts of Protestant religion, instead of the one, 
fold, in which our forefathers lived for nine hundred 
years; here we are, divided and split up into sects. 



■3W PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

each condemning all the rest to eternal flames; here 
we are, a motley herd of Church people, Methodists, 
Calvinists, Quakers, and Jews, chopping and changing 
with every wind; while the faith of St. Austin and St. 
Patrick still remains what it was when it inspired the 
leart and sanctified the throne of Alfred. 

448. Such, as far as religion is concerned, have been 
the effects of what is called the "Reformation;" what 
its effects have been in other respects; how it has en- 
feebled and impoverished the nation; how it has cor- 
rupted and debased the people; and how it has brought 
barracks, taxing-houses, poor-houses, mad-houses, and 
jails, to supply the place of convents, hospitals, guilds, 
and alms-houses, we shall see in the next number; and 
then we shall have before us the whole of the conse- 
quences of this great, memorable, and fatal event. 



LETTER XVI. 






Former Population of England and Ireland ,* 

Former Wealth. 

Former Power. 

Former Freedom. 

Former Plenty, Ease, and Happiness. 



Kensington, olst March, 1826. 
My Friends, 

449. This Letter is to conclude my task, which task 
was to make good this assertion, that the event called 
the a Reformation" had impoverished and degraded the, 
main body of the people of England and Ireland. In 
paragraph 4, I told you, that a fair and honest inquiry 
would teach us, that the word " Reformation" had, in 
! his case, been misapplied; that there was a change, 
but a change greatly for the worse; that the thing, called 
the Reformation, "was engendered in beastly lust, 
" brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished 
" a*jd fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of in- 






PROTESTANT REFQRMATIpN. 317 

" nocent English and Irish blood; and that, as to its 
" more remote consequences, they are, some of them, 
" now before us, in that misery, that beggary, that na- 
* ; kedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrangling and 
<i spite, which now stare us in the face and stun our 
" ears at every turn, and which the i Reformation' has 
•'given us in exchange for the ease and happiness and 
" harmony and Christian charity, enjoyed so abundant- 
" ly, and for so many ages, by our Catholic forefathers." 

450. All this has been amply proved in the fifteen 
foregoing Letters, except that I have not yet shown, in 
detail, how our Catholic forefathers lived, what sort 
and what quantity of food and raiment they had, com- 
pared with those which we have. This I am now about 
to do. I have made good my charge of beastly lust, hy- 
pocrisy, perfidy, plunder, devastation, and bloodshed; 
the charge of misery, of beggary, of nakedness and of 
hunger, remains to be fully established. 

451. But, I choose to be better rather than worse 
than my word; I did not pledge myself to prove any 
thing as to the population, wealth, power, and freedom of 
the nation; but I will now show not only that the peo- 
ple were better off, better fed and clad, before the u Re- 
formation" than they ever have been since; but, that 
the nation was more populous, wealthy, powerful and 
free before, than it ever has been since that event. Read 
modern romancers, called historians, every one of whom 
has written for place, or pension; read the statements 
about the superiority of the present, over former times; 
about our prodigious increase in population, wealth, 
power, and, above all things, our superior freedom; 
read the monstrous lies of Hume, who (vol. 5. p. 502,) 
unblushingly asserts, "that one good county of England 
u is now capable of making a greater effort than the 
u whole kingdom was in the reign of Henry V. when to 
" maintain the garrison of the small town of Calais, re- 
" quired more than a third of the ordinary revenues ;" 
this is the way in which every Scotchman reasons. He 
always estimates the wealth of a nation by the money 
the government squeezes out of it. He forgets that " a. 
poor government makes a rich people." According to 
this criterion of Hume, America must now be a. wretch,- 

27* 



818 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

edly poor country. This same Henry V. could conquer, 
really conquer, France, and that, too, without beggaring 
England by hiring a million of Prussians, Austrians, 
Cossacks, and all sorts of hirelings. But writers have, 
for ages, been so dependant on the government and the 
aristocracy, and the people have read and believed so 
much of what they have said, and especially in praise of 
the " Reformation," and its effects, that it is no wonder 
that they should think, that, in Catholic times, England 
was a poor, beggarly spot, having a very few people on 
it; and that the " Reformation," and the House of Bruns- 
wick and the Whigs, have given us all we possess of 
wealth, of power, of freedom, and have almost created 
us, or, at least, if not actually begotten us, caused nine- 
tenths of us to be born. These are all monstrous lies; 
but they have succeeded for ages. Few men dared 
to attempt to refute them; and, if any one made the at- 
tempt, he obtained few hearers, and ruin, in some shape. 
or other, was pretty sure to be the reward of his virtu- 
ous efforts. NOW, however, when we are smarting 
under the lash of calamity; NOW, when every one 
says, that no state of things ever was so bad as this; 
NOW men may listen to the truth, and, therefore, I 
will lay it before them. 

452. Populousness is a thing not to be proved by po- 
sitive facts, because there are no records of the num- 
bers of the people in former times; and because those 
which we have in our own day are notoriously false; if 
they be not, the English nation has added a third to its 
population during the last twenty years! In short, our 
modern records I have, over and over again proved to 
be false, particularly in my Register, No 2, of Volume 
46. -That England was more populous in Catholic times 
than it is now we must believe, when we know, that in 
the three first Protestant reigns, thousands of parish 
churches were pulled down, that parishes were united, 
in more than two thousand instances, and when we know 
from the returns now before parliament, that, out 
of 11,761 parishes, in England and Wales, there are 
upwards of a thousand, which do not contain a hundred 
persons each, men, women, and children. Then again, 
-the size of the churches. They were manifestly built* 



• PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 319 

i<n general, to hold three, four, five, or ten times the 
number of their present parishoners, including all the 
sectarians. What should men have built such large 
churches /or? We are told of their " piety and zeal f' 
yes, but there must have been men to raise the buildings. 
The Lord might favour the work; but there must have 
been hands as well as prayers. And, what motive could 
there have been for putting together such large quanti- 
ties of stone and mortar, and to make walls four feet 
thick, and towers and steeples, if there had not been 
people to fill the buildings? And, how could the labour 
have been performed? There must have been men to 
perform the labour; and, can any one believe, that this 
labour would have been performed, if there had not 
been a necessity for it? We now see large and most 
costly ancient churches, and these in great numbers too, 
with only a few mud-huts to hold the thirty or a hun- 
dred of parishioners. Our forefathers built/or ever, lit- 
tle thinking of the devastation that we were to behold! 
Next come th« lands, which they cultivated, and which 
we do not, amounting to millions of acres. This any 
one may verify, who will go into Sussex, Hampshire, 
Dorsetshire, Devonshire and Cornwall. They grew 
corn on the sides of hills, which we now never attempt 
to stir. They made the hill into the form of steps of a 
stairs, in order to plough and sow the flat parts. These 
flats, or steps, still remain, and are, in some cases, still cul- 
tivated; but, in nine cases out of ten, they are not. Why 
should they have performed this prodigious labour, if 
they had not had mouths to eat the corn? And how could 
they have performed such labor without numerous hands? 
On the high lands of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, there 
are spots of a thousand acres together, which still bear 
the uneftaceable marks of the plough, and which now 
never feel that implement. The modern writings on 
the subject of ancient population are mere romances; or 
they have been put forth with a view of paying court 
to the government of the day. George Chalmers, a 
placeman, a pensioner, and a Scotchman, has been one 
of the most conspicuous in this species of deception. — ■ 
He, in what he calls an " Estimate," states the popu- 
lation of England and Wales, in 1377, at 2,092,978.— 
The half of these, were, of course, females. The male^ 



320 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

then, were 1,046,486. The children, the aged, the in- 
firm, the sick, made a half of these; so that there were 
523,243 left of able bodied men in this whole kingdom 1 
Now, the churches, and the religious houses amounted, 
at that time, to upwards of 16,000 in number. There 
was one Priest to every church, and these Priests, toge- 
ther with the Monks and Friars, must have amounted 
to about 40,000 able men, leaving 483,243 able men. 
So that, as there were more than 1 4,000 parish church- 
es, there were not quite twelve able bodied men to each! 
Hume says, Vol. III. p. 9, that Wat Tyler had, in 1381 , 
(four years after Chalmers's date,) " a hundred thousand 
men assembled on BLACKHEATH;" so that, to say 
nothing of the numerous bodies of insurgents, assembled, 
at the same time, " in Hertford, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, 
and Lincoln;" to say nothing of " the King's army of 
40,000," (Hume, Vol. III. p. 8;) and, to say nothing of 
all the nobility, gentry, and rich people, here Wat Ty- 
ler had got together, on Blackheath, MORE TI1AN 
ONE-FIFTH of all the able-bodied men in England 
and Wales! And, he had, too, collected them together 
in the space of about six days! Do we want, can we 
want, any thing more than this, in answer, in refutation 
of these writers on the ancient population of the coun- 
try? Let it be observed, that, in these days, there were, 
as Hume himself relates, and his authorities relate also, 
frequently 100,000 pilgrims at a time assembled at Can- 
terbury, to do penance, or make offerings, at the shrine 
of Thomas a Becket. There must, then, have been 
50,000 men here at once; so that, if we were to believe 
this pensioned Scotch writer, we must believe, that 
more than A TENTH of all the able bodied men of Eng- 
land and Wales were frequently assembled, at one and 
the same time, in one city, in an extreme corner of the 
island, to kneel at the tomb of one single Saint. Mon- 
strous lie! And, yet it has been sucked down by u en- 
Hghtened Protestants," as if it had been a part of the 
Gospel. But, if Canterbury could give entertainment to 
100,000 strangers at a time, what must Canterbury it- 
selfhdive been? A grand, a noble, a renowned city it 
was, venerated, and even visited, by no small part of the 
Kings, Princes, and Nobles of all Europe. It is now a 
beggarly, gloomy looking town, with about 12,000 ift- 



PROTESTANT REFORMAfrtfiSr. 321 

.habitants, and, as the published accounts say, with 3,000 
of those inhabitants paupers, and with a part of the site 
of its ancient and splendid churches, convents and streets, 
covered with barracks, the Cathedral only remaining, for 
the purpose, as it were, of keeping the people hi mind of 
the height from which they have fallen. The best crite- 
rion of the population is, however, to be found in the 
number and sizes of the churches, and that of the religi- 
ous houses. There was* one parish church to every 
four square miles, throughout the kingdom; and one re- 
ligious house, (including all the kinds,) to every thirty 
square miles. That is to say, one parish church to eve- 
ry piece of land two miles- each way ; and one religious 
house to every piece of land J?ve miles long and six miles 
wide. These are facts that nobody can deny. The geo- 
graphy tells us the number of square miles in the country, 
and as to the number of parishes and religious houses, 
it is too well known to admit of dispute, being recorded 
in books without number. Well, then, if the father of 
lies himself were to come, and endeavour to pursuadc 
us, that England was not more populous, before the 
" Reformation" than it is :aow, he must fail with all but 
downright idiots. The same may be said with regard 
to Ireland, where there were, according to Archdall, 
742 religious houses in the reign of Henry VIII.; and, 
of course, one of these to every piece of land six 
miles each way ; and where there was a parish church- 
to every piece of land a little more than two miles and a 
half each way. Why these churches? What were they 
built for? By whom were they built? And how were 
all these religious houses maintained ? Alas ! Ireland was 
in those days, a fine, a populous, and a rich country.—^ 
Her people were not then half-naked and half-starved. 
There were, then, no projects for relieving the Irish by 
sending them out of their native land. 

453. THE WEALTH of the country is a question 
easily decided. In the reign of Henry VIIL, just before 
the ''reformation,'- the whole of the lands in England and 
Wales, had, according to Hume, been rated, and the 
animal rental was found to be three millions-, and, as to 
this, Hume (Vol. 4. p. I £7.) quotes undoubted authorities. 
Now, in order to know wh »t these three millions were 



3£2 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

worth in our money, we must look at the Act of Par- 
liament, 24th year of Henry VIII., Chap. 3., which 
says, that " no person shall take for beef or pork above 
"a halfpenny, and for mutton or veal above three far - 
"things, a pound, avoirdupois weight, and less in those 
" places where they be now sold for less" This is by 
retail, mind. It is sale in the butchers' shops. So that, 
in order to compare the then with the present amount of 
the rental of the country, we must first see what the 
annual rental of England and Wales now is, and then 
we must see what the price of meat now is. I wish to 
speak here of nothing that I have not unquestionable 
authority for, and I have no such authority with re- 
gard to the amount of the rental as it is just at this 
moment; but, I have that authoiity for what the rental 
was in the year 1804. A return, printed by order 
of the House of Commons, and dated 10th July, 
1S04, states, that a the returns to the Tax-office [pro- 
perty tax,] prove the rack-rental of England and 
" Wales to be thirty-eight millions a year" Here, 
then, we have the rental to a certainty; for what was 
there that could escape the all-searching, taxing eye of 
Pitt and his understrappers? Old Harry's inexperi- 
ence must have made him a poor hand, compared with 
Pitt, at finding out what people got for their land. 
Pitt's return included the rent of mines, canals, and of 
every species of real property, and the rental, the 
rack-rental, of the whole, amounted to thirty-eight mil- 
lions. This, observe, was in time of Bank-restnction ; 
in time of high prices ; in time of monstrously high 
rents ; in time of high price of meat; that very year 1 
gave I85. a score for fat hogs, taking head, feet, and 
all together; and, for many years, before and after, 
and including 1804, beef, pork, mutton and veal were, 
taken on the average, more than tenpence a pound by 
retail. Now, as Old Harry's Act orders the meat to 
be sold, in some places, for less than the halfpenny and 
the three farthings, we may, I think, fairly presume, 
that the general price was a halfpenny. So that a 
halfpenny of Old Harry's money was equal in value to 
tenpence of Pitt's money: and, therefore, the three mih 
Horn of rental in the time of Harry, ought to have be- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 323 

come sixty millions in 1804; and it was, as we have 
seen, only thirty-eight millions. In 1822, Mr. Cur wen 
said the rental had fallen to twenty millions. But, then 
meat had also fallen in price. It is safer to take 1804, 
where we have undoubted authority to go on. This 
proof is of a nature to bid defiance to cavil. No man 
can dispute any of the facts, and they arc conclusive 
as to the point, that the nation was more wealthy be- 
fore the " Reformation" than it is now. But, there are 
two other Acts of Parliament, to which I will refer, as 
corroborating, in a very striking manner, this fact of 
the superior general opulence of Catholic times. The 
Act, 18th year of Henry VI., Chap. XI., after setting 
forth the cause for the enactment, provides, that no 
man shall, under a heavy penalty, act as & justice of the 
peace, who has not lands and tenements of the clear 
yearly value of twenty pounds. This was in 1439, 
about a hundred years before the above-mentioned Act, 
about meat, of Harry VIII. The money was of still 
higher value in the reign of Henry VI. However, 
taking it as before, at twenty times the value of our 
money, the justice of the peace must then have had 
four hundred pounds a year of our money ; and we all 
know, that we have justices of the peace of one hun- 
dred a year. This Act of Henry VI. shows, that the 
country abounded in gentlemen of good estate; and, 
indeed, the Act itself says, that the people are not con- 
tented with having " men of small behaviour set over 
them.*' A thousand fellows, calling themselves histo- 
rians, would never overset such a proof of the superi- 
or general opulence and ease and happiness of the 
country. The other of the Acts, to which I have al- 
luded, is 1st year Richard III. Chap. 4., which fixes the 
qualification of a juror at twenty shillings a year in free- 
hold, or twenty-six and eight pence copyhold, clear of all 
, charges. That is to say, a clear yearly income from real 
property of, at least, twenty pounds a year of our money! 
And yet the Scotch historians would make us believe, 
that our ancestors were a set of beggars ! These things 
prove beyond all dispute, that England was, in Catho- 
lic times, a really wealthy country; that wealth was 
generally diffused; that every part of the country 



$24 ¥R0TESTANT REFORMATION. 

abounded in men of solid property; and that, of 
course, there were always great resources at hand in 
cases of emergency. If we were now to take it into 
our heads to dislike to have men of " small behaviour 
set over us;" if we were to take a fancy to Justices of 
the Peace of four hundred a year, and Jurors of twenty 
pounds a year; if we were, as in the days of good king* 
Henry, to say, that we " would not be governed nor 
ruled" by men of u small behaviour" how quickly we 
should see Botany Bay! When Cardinal Pole land- 
ed at Dover, in the reign of Queen Mary, he was met 
and escorted on his way by two thousand gentlemen of 
the country on horseback. What! 2000 country gen- 
tlemen in so beggarly a country as Chalmers describes 
it! Aye, and they must have been found in Kent and 
Surrey too. Can we find such a troop of country gen- 
tlemen there now ? In short, every thing shows, that 
England was then a country abounding in men of real 
wealth; and that it so abounded precisely because the 
king's revenue was smaM; yet this is cited by Hume, 
and the rest of the Scotch historians, as a proof of the 
nation's poverty ! Their notion is, that a people are 
worth what the government can wring out of them, and 
not a farthing more. And this is the doctrine which 
has been acted upon ever since the " Reformation," 
and which has, at last, brought us into our present 
wretched condition. 

454. As to the POWER of the country, compared 
with what it is now, what do we want more than the 
fact, that, for many centuries, before the " Reforma- 
tion," England held possession of a considerable part of 
France; that the " Reformation" took, as we have seen, 
the two towns of Boulogne and Calais from her, leav- 
ing her nothing but those little specks in the sea, Jersey 
and Guernsey? What do we want more than this? 
France was never a country that had any pretensions to 
cope with England until the " Reformation" began. 
Since the " Reformation" she has not only had such 
pretensions, but she has shown to all the world that the 
pretensions are well-founded. She, even at this mo- 
ment, holds Spain in despite of us, while, in its course, 
the " Reformation" has wrested from us a large por- 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 323 

tioii of our dominions, and has erected them into a 
state more formidable than any we have ever before be- 
held. We have, indeed, great standing armies, arse- 
nals, and barracks, of which our Catholic forefathers 
had none; but, they were always ready for war never- 
theless. They had the resources in the hour of neces- 
sity. They had arms and men; and those men knew 
what they were to fight for before they took up arms. 
It is impossible to look back, to see the respect in which 
England was held for so many, many ages; to see the 
deference with which she was treated by all nations, 
without blushing at the thought of our present state. 
None but the greatest potentates presumed to think 
of marriage alliances with England. Her kings and 
queens had kings and princes in their train. Nothing 
petty ever thought of approaching her. She was held 
in such high honour, her power was so universally ac- 
knowledged, that she had seldom occasion to assert it 
by war. And what has she been for the last hundred 
and fifty years? Above lialf the time at war; and, with 
a Debt, never to be paid, the cost of that war, she 
now rests her hopes of safety solely on her capacity of 
persuading her well-known foes, that it is not their in- 
terest to assail her. Her war-like exertions have been 
the effect, not of her resources, but of an a7iticipation of 
those resources. She has mortgaged, she has spent be- 
fore-hand, the resources necessary for future defence. 
And, there she now is, inviting insult and injury by her 
well-known weakness, and, in case of attack, her choice 
lies between foreign victory over her, or internal convul- 
sion. Power is relative. You may have more strength 
than you had, but if your neighbours have gained strength 
in a greater degree., you are, in etiect, weaker than you 
were. And, can we look at France and America, and 
can we contemplate the inevitable consequences of war, 
without feeling that we are fast becoming, and, indeed, 
that we are already become, a low and little nation? — 
Can we look back to the days of our Catholic ancestors, 
can we think of their lofty tone and of the submission 
instantly produced by their threats, without sighing, 
alas ! those days are never to return! 
28 



326 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

455. And, as to the FREEDOM of the nation, where 
is the man who can tell me of any single advantage 
that the "Reformation" has brought, except it he free- 
dom to have forty religious creeds instead of one ! Free- 
dom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it 
is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, and it 
means nothing else, ike full and quiet enjoyment of your 
own property. If you have not this; if this be not well 
secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but 
you are a slave. Now, our Catholic forefathers took 
special care upon this cardinal point. They suffered 
neither kings nor parliaments to touch their property 
without cause clearly shown. They did not read neivs- 
papers, they did not talk about debates, they had no taste 
for "mental enjoyment;" but they thought hunger and 
thirst great evils, and they never suffered any body to 
put them to board on cold potatoes and water. They 
looked upon bare bones and rags as indubitable marks 
of slavery, and they never failed to resist any attempt to 
affix thete marks upon them. You may twist the word 
freedom as long as you please; but at last,, it comes to 
quiet enjoyment of your property, or it comes to nothing. 
Why do men want any of those things that are called 
political rights and privileges? Why do they, for in- 
stance, want to vote at elections for members of parlia- 
ment ? Oh ! because they shall then have an influence 
over the conduct of those members. And of what use 
is that? Oh! then they will prevent the members from 
doing wrong. What wrong? Why, imposing taxes , 
that ought not to be paid. That is all; that is the use, 
and the only use, of any right or privilege that men in 
general can have. Now how stand we, in this respect, 
compared with our Catholic ancestors? They did not, 
perhaps, all vote at elections. But do we? Do a fifti- 
eth part of us ? And have the main body of us any, 
even the smallest influence in the making of laws and in 
the imposing of taxes? But the main body of the people 
had the Church to protect them in Catholic times. The 
Church had great power; it was naturally the guardian 
of the common people; neither kings nor parliaments 
could set its power at defiance; the whole of our history 
shows, that the Church was invariably on the side of the 






PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 32? 

people, and that, in all the much and justly boasted of tri- 
umphs, which our forefathers obtained over their kings 
and nobles, the Church took the lead. It did this because 
it was dependent upon neither kings nor nobles; because, 
and only because, it acknowledged another head; but, 
we have lost the protection of the Church, and have got 
nothing to supply its place: or rather, whatever there is 
of its power left has joined, or has been engrossed by, the 
other branches of the State, leaving the main body of the 
people to the mercy of those other branches. " The li- 
berties of England" is a phrase in every mouth; but 
what are those liberties? The laws which regulate 
the descent and possession of property; the safety from 
arrest, unless by due and settled process; the absence of 
all punishment without trial before duly authorised and 
well known judges and magistrates; the trial by jury; 
the precautions taken by the divers writs and summon- 
ses; the open trial; the impartiality in the proceedings. 
These are te "liberties of England" And, had our 
Catholic forefathers less of these than we have? Do 
we not owe them all to them? Have we one single 
law, that gives security to property or to life, which 
we do not inherit from them? The tread-mill, the law to 
shut men up in their houses from sunset to sunrise, the 
law to banish us for life if we utter any thing having a 
tendency to bring our " representatives" into contempt; 
these, indeed, we do'not inherit, but may boast of them, 
and about many others of much of the same character, 
as being, unquestionably, of pure Protestant origin. 

456. POVERTY, however, is after all, the great 
badge, the never-failing badge of slavery. Bare bones 
and rags are the true marks of the real slave. What is 
the object of Government? To cause men to live happily. 
They cannot be happy without a sufficiency of food and 
of raiment. Good government means a state of things 
in which the main body are well fed and well clothed. 
It is the chief business of a government to take care,, 
that one part of the people do not cause the other part 
to lead miserable lives. There can be no morality, no 
virtue, no sincerity, no honesty, amongst a people con- • 
nnually suffering from want; and, it is cruel, in the last 
degree, to punish such people for almost any sort of 



$28 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 

crime, which is, in fact, not crime of the heart, not 
crime of the perpetrator, but the crime of his all- 
controlling necessities. 

457. To what degree the main body of the people in 
England, are now poor and miserable; how deplorabty 
wretched they now are; this we know but too well; and 
now, we Avill see what was their state before this vaunt- 
ed "Reformation." I shall be very particular to cite 
my authorities here. I will infer nothing; I will give no* 
■*'•& timate;" but refer to authorities, such as no man can call 
in question, such as no man can deny to be proofs more 
complete than if founded on oaths of credible witness- 
es, taken before a judge and jury. I shall begin with 
the account which Fortesqjje gives of the state and 
manner of living of the English, in the reign of Henry 
VI.; that is, in the loth century, when the Catholic 
Church was in the height of its glory. Fortesqjjb 
was Lord Chief Justice of England for nearly twenty 
years; he was appointed Lord High Chancellor by Hen- 
ry V I. Being in exile, in France, in consequence of the 
wars between the Houses of York and Lancaster, and 
the King's son, Prince Edward, being also in exile with 
him, the Chancellor wrote a series of Letters, address- 
ed to the Prince, to explain to him the nature and effects 
of the Laws of England, and to induce him to study 
them and uphold them. This work, which was written 
in Latin, is called Be Laudibus Legum Anglim ; or 
Praise of the Laws of England. This book was, 
many years ago, translated into English, and it is a book 
of Law-Authority, quoted frequently in our courts at 
this day. No man can doubt the truth of facts, related 
in such a work. It was a work written by a famous 
lawyer for a Prince: it was intended to be read by 
other cotemporary lawyers, and also by all lawyers in 
future. The passage that I am about to quote, relating 
to the state of the English, was purely incidental; it was 
not intended to answer any temporary purpose. It must 
have been a true account. 

458. The Chancellor, after speaking generally of the 
nature of the laws of England, and of the difference 
between them and the laws of France, proceeds to 
*how the difference in their effects, by & description of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 3,29 

the state of the French people, and then by a descrip- 
tion of the state of the English. His words, words 
that, as I transcribe them, make my cheeks burn with 
shame, are as follows: "Besides all this, the inhabi- 
" tants of France give every year to their King- the 
u fourth part of all their wines, the growth of that year, 
" every vintner gives the fourth penny of what he makes 
" of his wine by sale. And all the towns and boroughs 
"pay to the King yearly, great sums of money, which 
" are assessed upon them, for the expenses of his men 
" at arms. So that the King's troops, which are al- 
" ways considerable, are subsisted and paid yearly by 
" those common people, who live in the villages, bor- 
" oughs and cities. Another grievance is, every village 
" constantly finds and maintains two cross-bow-men, at 
" the least; some find more, well arrayed in all their 
" accoutrements, to serve the King in his wars, as often 
" as he pleaseth to call them out, which is frequently 
" done. Without any consideration had of these things, 
"other very heavy taxes are assessed yearly upon every 
"village within the kingdom, for the King's service; 
" neither is there ever any intermission or abatement of 
" taxes. Exposed to these and other calamities, the 
" peasants live in great hardship and misery. Their 
" constant drink is water, neither do they taste, through- 
" out the year, any other liquor, unless upon some ex- 
traordinary times, • or festival days. Their clothing 
" consists of frocks, or little short jerkins, made of can- 
" vas, no better than common sackcloth ; they do not 
ii icear any woollens, except of the coarsest sort ; and 
"that only in the garment under their frocks; nor do 
"they wear any trowse, but from the knees upwards; 
" their legs being exposed and naked The women go 
" barefoot, except on holidays. They do not eat flesh, 
" except it be the fat of bacon, and that in very small 
" quantities, with which they make a soup. Of other 
" sorts, either boiled or roasted, they do not so much as 
" taste, unless it be of the inwards and offals of sheep 
" and bullocks, and the like, which are killed for the 
" use of the better sort of people, and the merchants; 
" for whom also quails, partridges, hares, and the like, 
11 are reserved, upon pain of the gallies ; as for their 
28* 



330 PROTESTANT REFORMATION, 

w poultry, the soldiers consume them, so that scarce tlie 
u eggs, slight as they are, are indulged them, by way 
" of a dainty. And if it happen that a man is observed 
" to thrive in the world, and become rich, he is pre- 
" sently assessed to the King^s tax, proportionably more 
*' than his poorer neighbours, whereby he is soon reduced 
" to a level with the rest?* Then comes his description 
of the English, at that same time; those "priest-rid- 
den" English, whom Chalmers and Hume, and the 
rest of that tribe, would fain have us believe, were a 
mere band of wretched beggars. — " The King of Eng- 
land cannot alter the laws, or make new ones, with- 
u out the express consent of the whole kingdom in Par- 
" liament assembled. Every inhabitant is at his liberty 
" fully to use and enjoy whatever his farm produceth, 
" the fruits of the earth, the increase of his flock, and 
" the like; all the improvements he makes, whether by 
a his own proper industry, or of those he retains in his 
" service, are his own, to use and to enjoy, without the 
4i let, interruption or denial of any. If he be in any 
" wise injured, or oppressed, he shall have his amends 
" and satisfactions against the party offending. Hence 
u it is that the inhabitants are rich in gold, silver, and in 
u all the necessaries and conveniences of life. They 
u drink no water, unless at certain times, upon a reli- 
" gious score, and by way of doing penance. They 
" are fed, in great abundance, with all sorts of flesh and 
" fish., of which they have plenty every where ; they are 
a clothed throughout in good woollens ; their bedding 
" and other furniture in their houses are of wool, and 
a that in great store. They are also well provided 
^ with all other sorts of household goods and necessary 
H implements for husbandry. Every one, according to 
" his rank, hath all things which conduce to make life 
11 easy and happy" 

459. Go, and read this to the poor souls, who are 
now eating sea-weed in Ireland? who are detected in 
robbing the pig-troughs in Yorkshire; who are eating 
horse-flesh and grains, (draff,) in Lancashire and Che- 
shire: who are harnessed like horses and drawing 
gravel in Hampshire and Sussex; who have 3d. a day 
allowed them by the Magistrates in Norfolk; who ar& 3 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION- 83! 

all over England, worse fed than the felons in the gaols, 
Go, and tell them, when they raise their hands from the 
pig-trough, or from the grains-tub, and, with their dirty 
tongues, cry " No-popery :" go, read to the degraded 
and deluded wretches, this account of the state of their 
Catholic forefathers, who lived under what is impu- 
dently called " popish superstition and tyranny" and in 
those times, which we have the audacity to call " the 
dark ages." 

460. Look at the then picture of the French; and, 
Protestant Englishmen, if you have the capacity of 
blushing left, blush at the thought of how precisely 
that picture fits the English now ! Look at all the parts 
of the picture; the food, the raiment, the game ! Good 
God! If any one had told the old Chancellor, that the 
day would come, when this picture, and even a picture 
more degrading to human nature, would fit his own 
boasted country, what would he have said? What 
would he have said, if he had been told, that the time 
was to come, when the soldier, in England, would have 
more than twice, nay, more than thrice the sum allowed to 
the day-labouring man; when potatoes would be carried 
to the field as the only food of the plough-man; when 
soup-shops would be opened to feed the English; and 
when the Judges, sitting on that very Bench on which 
he himself had sitten for twenty years, would, (as in 
the case last year of the complaint against Magistrates 
at Northallerton,) declare that bread and water 
were the general food of working people in England? 
What would he have said ? Why, if he had been told, 
that there was to be a " Reformation," accompanied 
by a total devastation of Church and Poor property, 
upheld by wars, creating an enormous Debt and enor- 
mous taxes, and requiring a constantly standing army; 
if he had been told this, he would have foreseen our 
present state, and would have wept for his country; 
but, if he had, in addition, been told, that, even in the 
midst of all this suffering, we should still have the in- 
gratitude and the baseness to cry " No popery" and the 
injustice and the cruelty to persecute those Englishmen 
and Irishmen, who adhered to the faith of their pious, 
moral, brave, free and happy fathers, he would have 
said, " God's will be done: let them suffer." 



33£ PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

461. But, it may be said, that it was not, then, the 
Catholic Church, but the Laws, that made the English 
so happy; for, the French had that Church as well as 
the English. Aye! But, in England, the Church was 
the very basis of the laics. The very first clause of 
Magna Charta provided for the stability of its proper- 
ty and rights. A provision for the indigent, an effectual 
provision, was made by the laws that related to the 
Church and its property; and this was not the case in 
France; and never was the case in any country but this: 
so that the English people lost more by a " Reforma- 
tion" than any other people could have lost. 

462. Fortescue's authority would, of itself, be 
enough; but, I am not to stop with it. White, the late 
Rector of Selbourne, in Hampshire, gives, in his his- 
tory of that once-famous village, an extract from a re- 
cord, stating, that, for disorderly conduct, men were 
punished, by being " compelled to fast a fortnight on 
bread and beerV This was about the year 1380, in the 
reign of Richard II. Oh! miserable " dark ages!' 5 
This fact must be true. White had no purpose to an- 
swer. His mention of the fact, or, rather, his transcript 
from the record, is purely incidental; and trifling as 
the fact is, it is conclusive as to the general mode of 
living in those happy days. Go, tell the harnessed 
gravel- drawers, in Hampshire, to cry "No popery;" 
for, that, if the Pope be not put down, he may, in time, 
compel them to fast on bread and beer, instead of suffer- 
ing them to continue to regale themselves on nice pota- 
toes and pure water. 

463. But, let us come to Acts of Parliament, and, 
first, to the Act above quoted, in paragraph 453, which 
see. That Act fixes the price of meat. After naming 
the four sorts of meat, beef, pork, mutton, and veal, the 
preamble has these words: " These being THE FOOD 
OF THE POORER SORT." This is conclusive. It 
is an incidental mention of a fact. It is in an Act of Par- 
liament. It must have been true; and, it is a fact that 
we know well, that even the Judges have declared 
from the Bench, that bread alone is now the food of the 
poorer sort. What do we want more than this to con- 
vince us, that the main body of the people have been 
impoverished by the " Reformation?" 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 333 

464. But, I will prove, by other Acts of Parliament, 
this Act of Parliament to have spoken truth. These 
Acts declare what the wages of workmen shall be. 
There are several such Acts, but one or two may suf- 
fice. The Act of 23d of Edward III. fixes the wages s 
without food, as follows. There are many other things 
mentioned, but the following will be enough for our 

purpose. 

* d. 

A woman hay -making, or Wee ding corn, fo» the day, 1 

A man filling dung-cart, • . . . . . 3f 

A reaper, . . 4 

Mowing an acre of grass, .06 

Threshing a quarter of wheat, 4 

The price of shoes^ cloth, and of provisions, through- 
out the time that this law continued in force was as 
follows : — 

A pair of shoes, 4 
Russet broad cloth the 

yard, Oil 

A stall-fed ox, * 14 

A grass-ted ox, 16 

A fat sheep unshorn 18 

A fat sheep shorn, 12 

A fat hog 2 years old, 3 4 

These prices are taken from the Preciosun of Bishop 
Fleetwood, who took them from the accounts kept 
by the bursers of convents. All the world knows, 
that Fleetwood's book is of undoubted authority. 

465. We may, then, easily believe, that " beef, pork, 
mutton and veal," were " the food of the poorer sort" 
when a dung-cart filler had more than the price of a fat 
goose and a half for a day's ivork, and when a woman 
was allowed, for a day's weeding, the price of a quart 
of red wine ! Two yards of the cloth made a coat for the 
shepherd; and, as it cost 2s. 2d. the reaper would earn 
it m6| days ; and, the dung-cart man would earn very 
nearly a pair of shoes every day ! This dung-cart filler 
would earn a fat shorn sheep in four days; he would 
earn a fat hog, two years old, in twelve days; he would 
earn a grass-fed ox in twenty days; so that we may ea- 
sily believe, that " beef, pork, and mutton," were " the 
food of the poorer sort." And, mind, this was " spriest 
ridden people;" a people " buried in Popish superstition!^ 
In our days of " Protestant light" and of " mental en* 



A fat goose, 2$ 

Ale, the gallon, by 

Proclamation, 1 

Wheat the quarter* g % 

White wine the gal- 
lon, 9 6 

Red wine, 4 



384 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

joyment," the " poorer sort" are allowed by the Magis- 
trates of Norfolk, 3d. a day for a single man able to 
work. That is to say, a halfpenny less than the Catho- 
lic dung-cart man had; and that 3d. will get the "No 
popery" gentlemen about six ounces of old-ewe mutton, 
while the Popish dung-cart man got, for his day, rather 
more than the quarter of a fat sheep. 

466. But, the Popish people might work harder than 
* { enlightened Protestants." They might do more work 
in a day. This is contrary to all the assertions of the 
feelosophers ; for they insist that the Catholic religion 
made people idle. But, to set this matter at rest, let us 
look at the price of the job-labour ; at the mowing by 
the acre and at the thrashing of wheat by the quarter; 
and let us see how these wages art now, compared with 
the price of food. I have no parliamentary authority 
since the year 1821, when a report was printed by or- 
der of the House of Commons, containing the evidence 
of Mr. Ellman, of Sussex, as to wages, and of Mr. 
George, of Norfolk, as to price of wheat. The report 
was dated 18th June, 1821. The accounts are for 20 
years, on an average, from 1800 inclusive. We will 
now proceed to see how the "popish, priest-ridden" 
Englishman stands in comparison with the " No-popery™ 
Englishman. 

POPISH MAN. NO-POPERY MAN. 

s. d 8. d. 

Mowing an acre of grass ... 6 3 7| 

Thrashing a quarter of wheat, 4 4 

Here are "waust improvements, Mau'm!" But, now let 
us look at the relative price of the wheat, which the la- 
bourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen 
that the " popish superstition slave" had to give jive- 
pence a bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. 
George states, that the "enlightened Protestant" had 
to give 10 shillings a bushel for his wheat; that is 24 
times as much as the " popish fool" w T ho suffered him- 
self to be "priest-ridden." So that the "enlightened" 
man, in order to make him as well off as the " dark 
ages" man was, ought to receive twelve shillings, instead 
of 3s. l%d. for mowing an acre of grass; and he, in like 
manner, ought to receive for thrashing a quarter of 
wheat, eight shillings, instead of the four shillings^ 



1PR0TESTANT REFORMATION. SSb 

which he does receive. If we had the records, we 
should, doubtless, find, that Ireland was in the same 
state. 

467. There! That settles the matter; and, if the Bi- 
ble Society, and the " Education" and the u Christian- 
knowledge" gentry would, as they might, cause this 
little book to be put in the hands of all their millions of 
pupils, it would, as far as relates to this kingdom, settle 
the question of religion for ever and ever ! I have now 
proved, that Fortescue's description of the happy life 
of our Catholic ancestors was correct. There wanted 
no proof; but I have given it. I could refer to divers 
other acts of parliament, passed during several centu- 
ries, all confirming the truth of Fortescue's account* 
And there are, in Bishop Fleetwood's book, many 
things that prove that the labouring people were most 
kindly treated by their superiors, and particularly by 
the clergy; for instance, he has an item in the expendi- 
ture of a convent, " 30 pair of autumnal gloves for the 
servants." -This was sad " superstition" In our " en- 
lightened" and Bible-reading age, who thinks of gloves 
for ploughmen? We have priests as well as the "dark 
ages" people had; ours ride as well as theirs; but theirs 
fed at the same time: both mount, but theirs seem to 
have used the rein more, and spur less. It is curious to 
observe, that the pay of persons in high situations was, 
as compared with that of the present day, very low 
when compared with the pay of the working classes. If 
you calculate the year's pay of the dung-cart man, you 
will find it, if multiplied by 20, (which brings it to our 
money) to amount to 91 pounds a year ; while the aver- 
age pay of the Judges did not exceed 60Z. a year 
of the then money, and, of course, did not exceed 
1 ,2002. a year of our money. So that a Judge had not 
so much pay as fourteen dung-cart fillers. To be sure, 
Judges had, in those " dark ages," when Littleton 
and FoRTEsauE lived and wrote, pretty easy lives; for, 
FoRTEsauE says, that they led lives of great " leisure 
and contemplation," and that they never sat in court 
but three hours in a day, from 8 to 11! Alas! if they 
had lived in this " enlightened age," they would have 
found little time for their " contemplation /" they would 



1R0TESTANT REFORMATION. 

have found plenty of work; they would have found, 
that theirs was no sinecure, at any rate, and that ten 
times their pay was not adequate to their enormous la- 
bour. Here is another indubitable proof of the great 
and general happiness and harmony and honesty and in- 
nocence that reigned in the country. The Judges led 
lives of leisure ! In that one fact, incidentally stated by 
a man, who had been twenty years Chief Justice of the 
King's Bench, we have the true character of the so long 
calumniated religion of our fathers. 

468. As to the bare fact, this most interesting fact, 
that the main body of the people have been impoverished 
and degraded since the time of the Catholic sway; as to 
this fact, there can be no doubt in the mind of any man 
who has, thus far, read this little work. Neither can 
there, I think, exist in the mind of such a man, any doubt, 
that this impoverishment and this degradation have been 
caused by the evenly called the " Reformation" seeing 
that I have, in former Numbers and especially in Num- 
ber XIV., clearly traced the debt and the enormous taxes 
to that event. But I cannot bring myself to conclude, 
without tracing the impoverishment in its horrible pro- 
gress. The well-known fact, that no compulsory col- 
lections for the poor, that the disgraceful name of 
pauper ; that these were never heard of in England, in 
Catholic times; and that they were heard of, the mo- 
ment the " Reformation" had begun; this single fact 
might be enough, and it is enough; but, we will see the 
progress of this Protestant impoverishment. 

469. The Act, 27 Henry VIII. chap. 25, began the 
poor laws. The monasteries were not actually seized on 
till the next year; but, the fabric of the Catholic Church 
was, in fact, tumbling down; and, instantly, the country 
swarmed with necessitous people, and open begging, 
which the Government of England had always held in 
great horror, began to disgrace this so-lately happy 
land. To put a stop to this, the above Act authorised 
sheriffs, magistrates and churchwardens to cause volun- 
tary alms to be collected; and, at the same time, it pun- 
ished the persevering beggar, by slicing off part of his 
ears, and for a second offence, put him to death, as a 
felon! This was the dawn of that "Reformation," 
which we are still called upon to admire and to praise ! 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 337 

470. The " pious young Saint Edward," as Fox, 
the Martyr-man, most impiously calls him, began his 
Protestant reign, 1st year Edward VI., chap. 3, by an 
Act, punishing beggars, by burning with a red-hot iron, 
and by making them slaves for two years, with power in 
their masters to make them wear an iron collar, and to 
feed them upon bread and water and refuse meat ! For 
even in this case, still there was meat for those who had 
to labour: the days of cold potatoes and of bread and wa- 
ter alone w r ere yet to come: they were reserved for our 
a enlightened" and Bible-reading days; our days of 
u mental enjoyment." And, as to horse-flesh and draff, 
(grains) they appear never to have been even thought of 
If the slave ran away, or w r ere disobedient, he was, by 
this Protestant Act, to be a slave for life. This Act 
came forth as a sort of precursor of the Acts to estab- 
lish the Church of England! Horrid tyranny ! The peo- 
ple had been plundered of the resource which the Magna 
Charta, which justice, which reason, which the law of 
nature, gave them. No other resource had been pro- 
vided ; and, they were made actual slaves, branded and 
chained, because they sought by their prayers to allay 
the cravings of hunger! 

471. Next came " good Queen Bess," who, after try- 
ing her hand eight times, without success, to cause the 
poor to be relieved by alms, passed that compulsory act, 
which is in force to the present day. All manner of 
shifts had been resorted to, in order to avoid this pro- 
vision for the poor. During this and the two former 
reigns, LICENSES TO BEG had been granted. But, 
at last, the compulsory assessment came, that true mark, 
that indelible mark, of the Protestant Church, as by 
law established. This assessment was put off to the 
last possible moment, and it never was relished by those 
who had got the spoils of the Church and the poor. 
But, it was a measure of absolute necessity. All the 
racks, all the law-martial, of this cruel reign could not 
have kept down the people without this Act, the au- 
thors of which seem to have been ashamed to state the 
grounds of it; for, it has no preamble whatever. The 
people, so happy in former times; the people described 
by Fortescue, w r ere now become a »ation of ragged 

29 



338 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

wretches. Defoe, in one of his tracts, says that " good 
Bess," in her progress through the kingdom, upon see- 
ing the miserable looks of the crowds that came to see 
her, frequently exclaimed, " pauper ubique jacet ;" that 
is, the poor cover the land. And this was that same 
country, in which Fortescue left a race of people, 
" having all things which conduce to make life easy and 
happy!" 

412. Things did not mend much during the reigns of 
the Stuarts, except in as far the poor-law had effect 
This rendered unnecessary the barbarities that had 
been exercised before the passing of it; and, as long as 
taxation was light, the paupers were comparatively lit- 
tle numerous. But, when the taxes began to grow heavy^ 
the projectors were soon at work f o find out the means 
of putting down pauperism. Amongst these was one 
Child, a merchant and banker, whose name was Josiah, 
and who had been made a knight or baronet, for he is 
called, Sir Josiah. His project, which was quite 
worthy of his calling, contained a provision, in his pro- 
posed Act, to appoint men, to be called, " Fathers oj 
the Poor;" and, one of the provisions relating to these 
" Fathers" was to be, " that they may have power to 
send such poor, as they may think Jit, into any of his 
Majesty's plantations /" That is to say, to transport 
and make slaves of them ! And, gracious God! this was 
in Fortescue's country. This was in the country of 
Magna Charta ! And this monster dared to publish 
this project! And we cannot learn, that any man had the 
soul to reprobate the conduct of so hard-hearted' a 
wretch. 

473. When the " deliverer" had come, when a "glo- 
rious revolution" had taken place, when a war had 
been carried on and a debt and a bank created, and all 
for the purpose of putting down Popery for ever, the 
poor began to increase at such a frightful rate, that the 
Parliament referred the subject to the Board of Trade 
to inquire, and to report a remedy. Locke was one of 
the Commissioners, and a passage in the Report of the 
Board is truly curious. " The multiplicity of the poor, 
" and the increase of the tax for their maintenance, is so 
" general an observation and complaint, that it cannot b^ 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 339 

" doubted of; nor has it been only since the last war 
" that this evil has come upon us, it has been a growing 
"burden on the kingdom this many years, and the last 
" two reigns felt the increase of it as well as the pre- 
" sent. If the causes of this evil be looked into, we 
" humbly conceive it will be found to have proceeded, 
" not from the scarcity of provisions, nor want of em- 
a ploymentfor the poor; since the goodness of God 
" has blessed these times with plenty no less than the 
" former; and a long peace, during three reigns, gave us 
" as plentiful a trade as ever. The growth of the poor 
"must therefore have some other cause; and it can be 
" nothing else but the relaxation of discipline and cor- 
" ruption; virtue and industry being as constant compa- 
" nions on the one side, as vice and idleness are on the 
" other." 

474. So, the fault was in the poor themselves! It does 
,not seem to have occurred to Mr. Locke that there 
must have been a cause for this cause. He knew very 
wel\, that there was a time, when there were no paupers 
at all in England; but, being a fat place-man under the 
;c deliverer" he could hardly think of alluding to that 
interesting fact. ''Relaxation of discipline!'''' What 
discipline? What did he mean by discipline? The 
laking away of the Church and Poor's property, the im- 
posing of heavy taxes, the giving of low wages com- 
pared with the price of food and raiment, the drawing 
away of the earnings of the poor to be given to paper- 
harpies and other tax-eaters; these were the causes of 
the hideous and disgraceful evil; this he knew very 
well, and therefore it is no wonder, that his report con- 
tained no remedy. 

475. After Locke, came, in the reign of Queen 
Vnne, Defoe, who seems to have been the father of 
the present race of projectors, Malthus and Lawyer 
Scarlett being merely his humble followers. He 
was for giving no more relief to the poor ; he imputed 
iheir poverty to their crimes, and not their crimes to 
their poverty; and their crimes he imputed to "their 
luxury, prigs and sloth." He said the English labour- 
ing people ate and drank three times as much as any fo- 
reigners! How different were the notions of this inso- 



340 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

lent French Protestant from those of the Chancellor 
Fortescue, who looked upon the good living of the 
people as the best possible proof of good laws, and 
seems to have delighted in relating, that the English 
were " fed, in great abundance, with all serts of flesh 
and fish /" 

476. If Defoe had lived to our " enlightened age ," 
he would, at any rate, have seen no u luxury" amongst 
the poor, unless he would have grudged them horse- 
flesh, draff, (grains,) sea-weed, or the contents of the 
pig-trough. From his day to the present, there have 
been a hundred projects, and more than fifty laws, to 
regulate the affairs of the poor. But still the pauper- 
ism remains for the Catholic Church to hold up in the 
face of the Church of England. " Here," the former 
may say to the latter, "here look at this: here is the 
• ; result of your efforts to extinguish me; here in this 
" one evil, in this never-ceasing, this degrading curse, 
" I am more than avenged, if vengeance I were allow- 
ed to enjoy: urge on the deluded potatoe-crammed 
>; creatures to cry c No Popery"* still, and, when they 
" retire to their straw, take care not to remind them of 
" the cause of their poverty and degradation." 

477. Hume, in speaking of the sufferings of the 
people, in the first protestant reign, says, that, at last, 
those sufferings " produced good," for that they " led to 
our present situation" What, then he deemed our 
present situation a better one than that of the days 
of Fortescue! To be sure, Hume wrote 50 years 
ago; but he wrote long after Child, Locke, and De- 
foe. Surely enough the "Reformation" has led to 
" our then present and our now present situation." It 
has, " at last," produced the bitter fruit, of which we 
are now tasting. Evidence, given by a Clergyman, 
too, and published by the House of Commons, in 1824 
states the labouring people of Suffolk to be a nest of 
robbers, too deeply corrupted ever to be reclaimed; 
evidence of a Sheriff of Wiltshire, (in 1821,) states 
the common food of the labourers, in the field, to be 
cold potatoes; a scale, published by the magistrates of 
Norfolk, in 1825, allows 3d. a day to a single labour* 
ing man; the Judges of the Court of King's Bench # 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 341 

(1825,) have declared the general food of the labouring 
people to be bread and water; intelligence, from the 
northern counties, (1826,) published upon the spot, in- 
forms us, that great numbers of people are nearly 
starving, and that some are eating horse-flesh and 
grains, while it is well known that the country abounds 
in food, and while the Clergy have recently put up, 
from the pulpit, the rubrical thanksgiving for times of 
plenty ; a law recently passed, making it felony to take 
an apple from a tree, tells the world that our charac- 
ters and lives are thought nothing worth, or that this 
nation, once the greatest and most moral in the world, 
is now a nation of incorrigible thieves; and, in either 
case, the most impoverished, the most fallen, the most 
degraded that ever saw the light of the sun. 

478. I have now performed my task. I have made 
good the positions with which I began. Born and bred 
a Protestant of the Church of England, having a wife 
and numerous family professing the same faith, having 
the remains of most dearly beloved parents lying in a 
Protestant church-yard, and trusting to conjugal or filial 
piety to place mine by their side, I have, in this under- 
taking, had no motive, I can have had no motive, but a 
sincere and disinterested love of truth and justice. It 
is not for the rich and the powerful of my countrymen 
that I have spoken; but for the poor, the persecuted, 
the proscribed. I have not been unmindful of the un- 
popularity and the prejudice that would attend the en- 
terprise; but, when I considered the long, long triumph 
of calumny over the religion of those, to whom we owe 
all that we possess that is great and renowned; when I 
was convinced that I could do much towards the coun- 
teracting of that calumny; when duty so sacred bade 
me speak, it would have been baseness to hold my 
tongue, and baseness superlative would it have been, 
if, having the will as well as the power, I had been re- 
strained by fear of the shafts of falsehood and of folly. 
To be clear of self*reproach is amongst the greatest of 
human consolations, and now, amidst all the dreadful 
perils, with which the event that I have treated of has, 
at last, surrounded my country, I can, while I pray 
God to save her from still further devastation and mis- 
29* 



i'42 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

cry, safely say, that, neither expressly nor tacitly, am 
I guilty of any part of the cause of her ruin. 



LETTER XVIL 



Extra Letter, addressed to the Parsons of the 
Established Church, 



Parsons, 

You have, in all sorts of ways, been at me for a great 
many years; and the time appears now to be arrived for 
me to bestow a little time upon you. You shall not 
catch me at what you call "blasphemy." It is your 
temporalities that I mean to confine myself to chiefly, to 
the com and to the wool and the lambs : lambs, I mean 
such as we cat: and I shall take care to leave other 
lambs, that you sometimes talk of, to be talked of by 
Father in God Jocelyn, his soldier, Movelly, and their 
like. You have had, your full swing at me quite long 
enough. I shall now attend a little to you. I remem- 
ber your Address to the King, in 1812, urging him to 
push on the war. I remember your exultation when the 
French people were said, and were thought, to be con- 
quered, and to have had tithes imposed on them again; I re- 
member you at Winchester, just as the Power-of- Impri- 
sonment Bill was passing. Parsons, I remember you: I 
know you well: you have been at me personally for 
years. Before two years be at an end, you shall find, 
Parsons, that I am neither forgetful nor ungrateful. 

At present I have to do with some of your money col- 
lections for what you call the National Schools : and I 
shall begin by inserting, first, the King's Circular Letter, 
It is curious enough that we know little of you except in 
-connexion with money. You always approach us, ac- 
companied with some money demand. I remember 
somebody telling me that the late Duke of Portland 
said, that tithes were absolutely necessary to make the 
clergy known to the people. I do not know that his 






MOTESTANT REFORMATION. 34$ 

Grace, in his wisdom, took the trouble to show, that it 
was at all necessary that there should be any such men 
known to the people; that it was at all necessary that we 
should pay any body to teach us religion, seeing that we 
had the Word of God itself in our houses. However, 
more of this by-and-by. The King's letter, which I am 
about to insert, is called, "King's Letter to the Archbi- 
shop of Canterbury.^ There was one also to the Arch- 
bishop of York, of the same tenor and date. 
" George R. 

u Most Reverend Father in God, our right trusty and 
right entirely beloved Councillor, we greet you well: — - 
Whereas the Incorporated National Society, for promo- 
ting the education of the poor in the principles of the es- 
tablished Church throughout England and Wales, have 
by their petition humbly represented unto us, that the 
President and Governors of the said society have pur- 
sued with their best endeavours the design adopted for 
extending more effectually the benefit of religious educa- 
tion to the growing population of our realm: that they 
are duly sensible that in no case can the great end of 
public happiness be so essentially promoted as by cul- 
tivating the principles of religious faith and moral duty; 
that the means for accomplishing their purpose have 
been supplied already to a considerable extent by the 
JYational Society, in the grants for erecting schools up- 
on the model of the Central School; the charge of build- 
ing rooms of suitable dimensions forming the chief bur- 
den of expense in these provisions; that the Returns of 
the last year have presented the welcome spectacle of 
the near and distant operation of this comprehensive 
scheme of education exhibited in 1817, United Schools 
affording religious culture with every beneficial influence 
on the minds and manners, the habits and appearance of 
more than three hundred and fifty thousand children: 
that the sums contributed by royal munificence and 
individual bounty in former benefactions have been 
thus expended, whilst- a bare sufficiency remains in 
annual subscriptions for the maintenance of the Cen- 
tral School, from which so much benefit is derived to 
all parts of the country: that the call to be excited under 
favour of our mandate, for which the Society make their 
humble wit, will be wholly applied, should the prayer of 



844 Protestant reformation, 

their Address be crowned with a successful issue, to the 
furtherance of the same object in all parts of our realm, 
by multiplying schools, and by lending aids for procuring 
sites and for building public seminaries: And so much 
of good having already been accomplished , the said socie- 
ty, in order to enable the labourers in this prolific field 
to persevere with increasing vigour, have, therefore, 
most humbly implored us that collections may be made 
in the Churches and Chapels, throughout England and 
Wales, in furtherance of this important object: we, tak- 
ing the premises into our royal consideration, and being 
always ready to give the best encouragement and coun- 
tenance to undertakings which tend so much to the pro- 
motion of true piety and of our holy religion, are graci- 
ously pleased to condescend to their request; and do 
hereby direct you that these our Letters be communi- 
cated to the several suffragan bishops within your pro- 
vince, expressly requiring you and them to take care that 
publication be made hereof on such Sunday and in such 
places, within your and their respective dioceses, as you 
and the said bishops shall appoint; and that upon this 
occasion the Ministers in each parish do effectually ex- 
oite their parishioners to a liberal contribution, whose be- 
nevolence towards carrying on the said charitable work 
shall be collected the week following at their respect- 
ive dwellings by the Churchwardens or Overseers of 
the poor in each parish; and the Ministers of the seve- 
ral parishes are to cause the sums so collected to be paid 
immediately to the treasurer for the time being of the 
mid Society, to be accounted for by him to the said So- 
ciety, and applied to the furtherance of the above-men- 
tioned good designs: — and so we bid you very heartily 
farewell. 

" Given at our Court at Carlton House, the second 
day of July, 1823, in the Fourth year of our 
reign. 

" By his Majesty's Command. 

"(Countersigned) R. Peel." 
" Buckden Palace, 2 1 st July, 1 823. 
" Reverend Sir, 

" Inclosed I transmit to you a copy of the King's Let- 
ter. — Not doubting your readiness to comply with any 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 345 

command from His Majesty, I feel it almost unnecessa- 
ry to add my earnest wish that you should use your best 
endeavours to promote His Majesty's benevolent and 
pious object. It is required that publication of the Let- 
ter be made in your church or Chapel on Sunday the 
Seventeenth Day of August next, and that the officiat- 
ing Ministers in each Parish do effectually excite their 
Parishioners to a liberal contribution to the Charity re- 
commended, by such means as are suggested in the 
King's Letter, and by all others which they may possess, 
" I am, Rev. Sir, 

Your faithful Servant, 

G. Lincoln. 

" JV. B. — You are directed, as soon as may be after 
the Collection, to remit the amount by a safe convey- 
ance to Joshua Watson, Esquire, Treasurer of the 
National Society, Bartlett's Buildings, London; and you 
are further requested to return by Post the inclosed 
Form of account, properly filled up, which is address- 
ed to Mr. Freeling." 

I am now to take it for granted, that the readers 
of this Register will have read the two letters with 
attention, and will have particularly noted the words 
which I have caused to be put in italic characters. 
Let us, then, look at the whole of this thing. I will 
engage that such a thing never was heard of be- 
fore in any country in the world. Here is the King 
of a great kingdom calling upon his bishops to call upon 
the clergy, to call upon his people in his name, by hig 
mandate, to excite the said people to a liberal contribu- 
tion. The clergy are to excite them effectually. And 
the instrument, by which they are called upon to do 
this, is called a " Royal Mandate." 

Now, Parsons, this is not absolute force : it is not 
commanding the people to surrender some of their mo- 
ney, and to refuse at their peril. It is not absolute 
force, such as the tax-gatherer employs; but can any 
one say that it is voluntary? Can any one say that the 
far greater part of the people will not look upon it as 
resisting the King^s command if they do not give? But, 
the plain truth is this: when the churchwardens and 
other officers go round to the people, and the people 



346 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

know, that they are not compelled by law to give thenj 
any thing; still they give them out of fear; for these 
churchwardens, overseers, and other officers, are also 
tax-gatherers ; and where is the man who is not always 
in debt for taxes? So that it is very voluntary work! 
The Parson either goes round himself, or he lets it be 
well known that he wishes people to subscribe. In- 
deed, he preaches in favour of subscribing. He has 
power to raise his tithes, or to take them in kind. The 
Landlord, the Squire, the Dead-ioeight Admiral, or 
General, or Colonel, or Captain, (all monstrously pious 
creatures,) deal with tradesmen that are called upon to 
subscribe for pious purposes. Here are pretty effectual 
excitements to charity I In short, impudent, indeed, must 
be the hypocrite who does not acknowledge, that, up- 
on these occasions, much more is given out of fear than 
out of love. I was pressed once to subscribe for the 
relief of the " German sufferers .'' The subscription 
collector was also the collector of our assessed taxes. 
" Not a farthing," said I: "J icish the French had 
stripped the slaves of tlieir very skins." Slap went his 
hand into his pocket, and out he pulled, ready prepared, 
a Bill for the assessed taxes that I owed ! " I thought as 
much," said I: "but, thank God! here's your money 
that I must pay; and, thank God! I am in a state to dare 
to refuse to give my money to the rascally Germans, 
who have been doing all that they have been able to do 
to make me as perfect a slave as themselves. Here! 
take your tax money, and carry your subscription book 
and present it to the devil; at any rate, take it out of my 
house, and yourself along with it, and that, too, in very 
quick time." 

But, though I dared refuse, many of my neighbours, 
and a very great majority of them, too, dared not to re- 
fuse. They gave money to the " Suffering Germans," 
when they, themselves, wanted money to buy a joint of 
meat. Yet, there was no letter from the king upon 
that occasion; no royal mandate; no order from the 
king effectually to excite to liberal contribution. In the 
present case, the thing is very nearly a tax. It wants 
but very little of a tax. The means made use of amount 
so nearly to compulsion, that it is an abuse of words; 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 847 

and it is, in fact, a falsehood to call it a voluntary con- 
tribution. 

What, then, is all this for ? Strange thing, to behold 
a King calling upon his bishops, and the bishops upon 
their clergy, to call upon the people at large to sub- 
scribe sums of money, to be sent up to London to one 
Joshua Watson, in order that Joshua may employ it 
in extending religious education to the people ! Good 
God! the King, that is to say, the royal and sacred 
head of the church, and all his bishops, and all his cler- 
gy, issuing mandates; putting forth pastoral letters; 
preaching sermons, sufficient almost to lull the raging 
sea to repose; and the churchwardens and overseers 
going round from door to door, praying and beseeching 
His Majesty's loyal and pious people to aid in the chari- 
table work.- And all for what? To get a parcel of 
money together to be sent to Joshua Watson, Es- 
quire, and Wine Merchant, of Mincing-lane, or late of 
Mincing-lane, which runs down out of Fenchurch- 
street towards Billingsgate, in the city of London; and 
this in order that the said Esquire and Wine and Spirit 
Merchant may lay out the said money in causing to be 
cultivated the principles of religious faith! Match 
that, if you can, Roman Catholics, or any body else. 
Match that, or " hide your diminished heads." Mind 
you, Parsons, it is not figuratively that I am talking 
here. I mean to say, that this Joshua Watson is, or 
was some time ago, a wine and spirit merchant, in 
Mincing-lane aforesaid, and living in that lane with his 
family. For several years since you began upon me, 
and especially since Sidmouth began in 1817, I have 
formed a resolution, that nothing shall be done under my 
roof in the way of drink; or, at least, in the wine and 
spirit way. Judge Jeffries said, and with reason, that 
he was afraid of none but sober men. It is long, there- 
fore, since T had any communion with wine and spirit 
sellers: but, at the time when I was fool enough to suf- 
fer people to drink wine and spirits under my roof, I 
bought wine and spirits of this, very Joshua Watson! 
Aye, this very Joshua Watson, to get money to be 
sent to whom, all the by law established pupils in the 
kingdom are put in a state of requisition! What a 



348 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

strange concern is this! The extending of religious 
faith is to be left to Joshua Watson, wine and spirit 
merchant, of Mincing-lane. The King does not, in- 
deed, name Joshua; but he says, the Treasurer of the 
Society for the time being; and the Bishops say that 
that Treasurer is Joshua. The Ministers might as well 
have gone a little farther, and advised the King to name 
Joshua at once; for, much lower than the tenor of 
this paper it was next to impossible to go. When Mr. 
Peel's hand was in, he might as well have gone the full 
length; but, indeed, the production is, as it now stands, 
a pretty good specimen of what we have to expect from 
that illustrious family, which the Spinning-Jenny Sire 
had (as we are told in his pedigree in the Baronetage,) 
u a 'presentiment that he should be, the founder o/." 

But, Parsons, let me come a little closer to you. 
What is the subscription for? For what is this money 
collected and sent to Joshua Watson? It is, that 
Joshua may lay it out. And what is Joshua to lay it 
out upon? Why, it is to be laid out in something about 
schools; about buildings, wherein to teach people. 
And what are the people to be taught, Parsons? I ask, 
or would ask, if 1 could get at him, the Right Trusty 
and Right entirely Beloved Archbishop. I would say, 
I greet you well; and pray tell me now what is Joshua 
Watson to cause to be taught with this money? But, 
Parsons, let me stop a bit: it is the growing population 
of our realm that is to be taught. Now, pray tell me, 
Parsons, what this word growing means. A most ele- 
gant paper this is. It has no full point till it gets to the 
end. However, what does it mean by growing popula- 
tion? Does it mean that the people that are to be taught 
must be fine growing girls and boys; and that no notice 
is to be taken of those that are set or stunted; or, would 
it insinuate that the number of the people in this country is 
increasing ; and thus hint at an apology for resorting to 
these extraordinary means. If the former be meant, it 
will only call forth a laugh; and if the latter, I have 
something to say to that by-and-by, when, probably, 
we shall see that this word growing was not stuffed in 
without a motive. 

To return now to the ground that I quitted but a min- 
ute ago, I would say to the Archbishop, I greet you 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 349 

well, and pray tell me what Joshua Watson is to c?<u e 
to be taught to the "growing population" of our realm. 
Is it shoemakingor tailoring? No. Is it lawyering cr 
doctoring? No. Is^it discounting or stock-jobbing? 
No. Is it the Chinese or the French language? No. Is 
it military tactics, or the slang of the blue and buff? No. 
Well, then, is it writing a fair hand; is it one or all the 
branches of mathematics? No: it is none of all these. 

Pray, then, most Reverend Father in God, what is it 
that Joshua is to have taught by the means of all this 
money? The iptfst Reverend Father in God would 
perhaps, answer: Why, you graceless dog, what do 
you think it is that he is to teach but the things men- 
tioned in his Majesty's Letter? Well, then, this is re- 
ligion. — Joshua Watson is to lay out the money in ex- 
tending religious education. In cultivating the princi- 
ples of religious faith, in affording religious culture. 
What, then, ye Reverend Sirs, is it the Mahommedan, 
or the Chinese, or the Otaheitan; or what religion is it 
that Joshua is to have taught? "No," I think I hear 
the fire-shovels exclaim with thundering voice, " No, 
you seditious dog, you accursed wretch, you terrible 
Jacobinical villain, it is the Christian religion, to he sure." 
Beg your pardons, Reverend Sirs : beseech your forgive- 
ness, spiritual persons; but it must then be, to be sure, 
the Roman Catholic religion, or the Anabaptist religion, 
or the Presbyterian, or the Methodist, or the Quaker, 
or the Jumper, or the Shaker religion? " No, you re- 
bellious dog; it is the religion of this kingdom, as by law 
established.''' Graceless wretch that I am, I now see 
my mistake; for His Majesty in his letter says, that the 
money is to be sent to the Treasurer; that is to say, to 
Joshua Watson, Esquire, Wine and Spirit Merchant, 
to be by him laid out in promoting education, in the 

PRINCIPLES OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH." 

Good Lord ! did one ever hear of the like of this be- 
fore? Here the business is to teach religion; to bring 
children up in a religious manner; to cultivate religious 
faith; to give religious culture to the minds of children, 
to promote true piety ; and to promote, also, our holy 
religion, And who is to do all this but Joshua Wat- 
son, the Wine and Spirit Merchant! We have a King 
30 



350 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

at the head of this holy religion. How much His Ma- 
jesty receives a year, as Head of the Church, I do not 
pretend to say. We have forty-four Bishops belonging 
to this Church, who receive amongst them very little 
short of --half a million a year. We have a Clergy 
that receive about seven millions and a half a 
Year, exclusive of a vast deal of property. Here is a 
pretty sum of money to be given to support a Church 
establishment. Here is more money given to this 
Church, which does not boast of four millions of per- 
sons that belong to it and frequent it: here is more mo- 
ney given to the Ministers of this Church, than is given 
to all the rest of the teachers of religion in the Chris- 
tian world. And, notwithstanding all this; notwith- 
standing all the boasting of the learning and piety of the 
clergy of this Church; notwithstanding these things, 
the King himself now tells us that it is necessary to go 
round with a begging box, to raise money by subscrip- 
tion, to be sent to a Wine and Spirit Merchant in Min- 
cing-lane, in order that he may lay the money out in 
cultivating the principles of " religious faith" and in 
the promotion of true piety and our holy religion ! 

Such a thing baffles all description. No talent can 
place it in so strong a light as it is placed by a simple 
statement of the facts. This rich, this Church over- 
gorged with riches; this Church which is everlastingly 
Dragging of the learning and piety of its clergy; this 
Church going begging about for money, in order to send 
it to a Wine and Spirit Merchant in London, in order 
that he may lay it out in " promoting our holy religion," 
is such a thing as we may boldly say the world never 
heard of before, and never will hear of again. What 
are all these parsons for? Why have we Deacons, 
Priests, Prebendaries, Curates, Vicars, Rectors, Can- 
ons, Deans, Archdeacons, Bishops, and Archbishops? 
Why have we twenty thousand of these men and their 
families to keep without work? Go and get upon a 
hill; see how thickly the spires arise around you in all 
directions. What are all these men and all these build- 
ings for, if the King must send round a begging box, in 
order to get money to be sent up to Joshua Watson, 
that he may lay it out in " cultivating the principles of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 351 

religious faith, and in the promotion of true piety, and 
our holy religion?" 

Ah! Parsons! in this transaction we have a tacit con- 
fession that those who have contended that this enor- 
mously expensive establishment is worse than useless, 
and ought to be %inestablkhed by law ; here we have a 
tacit confession, that such persons have reason clearly 
on their side. For what are the churches, if Joshua 
Watson is to be applied to to cultivate the principles 
of religious faith, and to promote true piety and our ho- 
ly religion ? If it be necessary, I say, to raise money 
to send to Joshua Watson for these purposes, I want 
to know what the churches are for. Come, now: un- 
lock for once: speak out plainly: tell me what the 
churches are for. If they are not the places to culti- 
vate the principles of religious faith, and to promote 
true piety and our holy religion, what are they for? The 
devil a bit! No answer shall I ever get from you; but 
I will tell you the uses that I have seen the churches 
put to, by those who still adhered to the religion of those 
who built the churches. 

Now, hear me, Parsons, and you will see how the 
begging box and Joshua Watson might be dispensed 
with. In France, in a village much about as populous 
as the village of Botley, with a church a little bigger; 
the population being about equal in amount to that of 
Botley, I resided for- some time. In the month of April, 
at six o ) clock in the morning, I was going (just after I 
came to reside in the village) across the church-yard. 
I heard a great many voices in the church. I went in; 
and there I saw the parson with about forty children of 
the village, teaching them the " principles of religious 
faith:" teaching the principles of religious faith to the 
growing population. Was not this the 'way to teach 
religious faith, Parsons? Here was no schoolmaster 
wanted: no begging box; no Joshua Watson, and no 
" Tracts" Here was a parson performing his duty, 
and in the proper place. Every morning at six o'clock, 
in all the churches of all the villages round about, this 
was going on. The boys and girls were at home by 
seven or eight o'clock, ready to go to work. At the 
time I am referring to, the priests were preparing the* 



352 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 






children for the Feast 0/ Easter. At other times of 
the year they were preparing them for other festivals; 
so that every child, upon arriving at a certain age, had 
been regularly taught the principles of religious faith. 
There was no pay given to the parson for this. His 
benefice was his pay; and even that he was expected 
to divide between his poorer parishioners. 

" Go you and do likewise." Get you up in the morn- 
ing, and take the boys and girls to the church, teach 
fhem there those principles of religious faith which you 
want to have them taught, do as those Catholics did 
who built the churches, and who had them wrested 
from them by a series of deeds more unjust and more 
bloody than any other that the world ever heard of: 
but, how are you to do as they did ? Great numbers 
of you do not reside in the livings of which you receive 
the tithes, and with regard to which you have under- 
taken the care of souls. In a large part of Ireland, 
and in not a few places in England, there are actually 
no churches : the churches have been suffered to tumble 
down and fall into heaps of rubbish, while you have 
retained the tithes. In numerous instances, one person 
attends to seven or eight parishes in Ireland; and, in 
many instances, to two, three, or four parishes in Eng- 
land. How then can you teach the principles of reli- 
gious faith to the growing population? How can you 
do as the priest did in France, and as they formerly did 
in England ? Your parishioners seldom see you, ex- 
cept merely on the Sunday, and, then, perhaps you do 
not speak to a single man of them: and, as to the chil- 
dren of the poor, whoever saw you attempting to edu- 
cate any one of them? Churches were not made to 
be locked up from week's end to week's end. As far 
as religion is conerned, the church is the parish school^ 
to be sure; and what is the parson for, if he be not to 
•"be the parish teacher. 

It is clear enough that this religious teaching ought 
to be delegated to no Society whatever. There be- 
ing an established Church, that Church being so 
richly endowed, that Church having such immense 
possessions in land, in house, in all sorts of ways, it 
is quite monstrous to see the work of religious teach- 
ing delegated to a Wine Merchant and his Society. 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 353 

Yet this is no more than acting upon the advice given 
by the Bishop of Winchester, in his last year's Charge 
to his Clergy. The Bishop says, in that Charge, that 
" nothing will be more useful than giving to the young 
people a selection of those excellent tracts, which 
are furnished by the Society for promoting Christian 
Knowledge; that correct expounder of evangelical truth, 
that firm supporter of the Established Church?'' 

This, as I observed at the time, was a putting of the 
Church under the protection of this Society, a self- 
created Society: a society publishing tracts of the most 
impudent character, full of falsehoods and calumnies. 
The Bishop recommends the National School people 
to get their tracts from this Society, and, indeed, this 
is the source from which the National Schools are sup- 
plied. The Societies are, in fact, as far as relates to 
publications, one and the same. The School Society 
appear to pay for the buildings, while the other So- 
ciety furnishes the books. In a Report of the Society 
for promoting of Christian Knowledge, I find several 
statements respecting the number of children educated 
in the schools supplied by the Society for the promo- 
tion of Christian Knowledge; so that these are to be 
viewed as one and the same body. 

Our friend, Joshua Watson, is Treasurer to the So- 
ciety for the promoting of Christian Knowledge also, 
as well as to the School Society; and the rendezvous 
of both Societies, is in BartletVs Buildings, Holborn, 
London. Now, then, what are the pretty books, 
which the Society gives to the children to read? They 
begin with about a score of books abusive of the an- 
cient worship of this country; that is to say, of the 
Catholic Religion. I am surprised that some Catholic 
does not, were it only for sport, take up his pen and 
turn these wretched things into ridicule. Pretty fel- 
lows these, indeed, are to talk; pretty fellows to rail 
against the Catholic Church, or even against any reli- 
gious sect, when they are, what the Bishop of Win- 
chester calls the Defenders of the Established Church: 
no: its "supporters." What a pretty thing this is, 
then, an Established Church, which stands in need of a 
numerous band of supporters! Can this be the Church 
30* 



354 PROTESTANT REFORMATIO*?, 

of Christ? He said, "on this rock will I build my 
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." This is the text that the Catholics rely upon, 
They do not want any supporters. Then they are, in 
Ireland, at the end of more than two hundred and fifty 
years of most hellish persecution; with all the Church- 
es taken by the Protestants; all the tithes; all the im- 
mense glebes; all the offices, civil and military: there 
they are at the end of two hundred and fifty years, a 
Protestant Church by law established, and by bayonet up- 
held; a Protestant army; a Protestant magistracy; a Pro- 
testant government; and a Catholic people ! And this So- 
ciety comes out with its catalogue of books for the culti- 
vating of the principles of religious faith, and that cata- 
logue contains, altogether in one piace, fifteen publica- 
tions, some at as low a price as a half-penny, " against 
popery /" 

And who are the members of this famous Society? I 
find that one of the Members last year was Castle- 
reagh, who cut his throat at North Cray. This libe- 
ral and pious soul subscribed fifty pounds towards the 
delightful tracts of this Society. Indeed, to balance 
against this, we have the Rev. Thomas Jephson, Fel- 
low of St. John's College, Cambridge. This gen- 
tleman appears to be doubly zealous, he subscribes for 
the purposes of the Society generally; and then he gives 
an additional subscription, r to the special fund in coun- 
teraction of infidel and blasphemous publications." So 
that the Rev. Thomas Jephson, of St. John's College, 
Cambridge, may be called one of the Dons of this Soci- 
ety for the promoting of Christain Knowledge. If I had 
lime, I could make a very pretty collection of names out 
of this list of subscribers. Unquestionably, many of them 
have subscribed to the old Society with a sincere de- 
sire of promoting christian knowledge. But, after the 
abusive Tracts which have lately come out; after those 
false and impudent Tracts which I have so often noti- 
ced, whosoever continues a Member of this Society, will 
merit to be delt with in the roughest manner. 

Parsons, do you think that you will make much pro- 
gress in getting upholders of the church that the Rever- 
end Mr. Morritt belongs to? You have it in evidence 
that he sent people to drive his parish for tithes. You have 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 355 

it ib evidence that five sheep of one poor parishioner 
were seized for five shillings' worth of tithes, that 
they were sold at public auction for five shillings, and 
that the Parson's own driver bought them for 
five shillings. You have several other things in 
evidence. It is perfectly notorious, that, without a 
large standing army, tithes could not be Col- 
lected. You see a great Kingdom on the other 
side of the Channel, where the Catholic religion ex- 
ists, where it is, in fact, the religion of the country; 
where it is indeed u establisded by law," and yet, where 
it has no tithes: Now, do you think, Parsons, that Jo- 
shua Watson will be able to persuade people, that all 
this enormous wealth ought to remain in your hands, 
when your congregations do not consist of more than a 
fourth part of the people in the Kingdom ? Oh ! no f Jo- 
shua Watson will be able to do no such a thing. If he 
still live in Mincing-lane, and deal in wine and brandy, 
he might, perhaps, if he chose to bestow a few bottles 
on his neighbours of Billingsgate, convert them into a 
Church and King-mob; but nobody else, be you well 
assured, in this whole Kingdom. 

The character of this church, " as by law-establish- 
ed" is very sufficiently described in the transactions re- 
lative to the non-residence of its clergy. To teach the 
people, you must be where the people are. This is clear 
enough; and the law, which established the church, re- 
quired, that, generally speaking, you should live along 
with the people; that is to say, in the same parish 
with the people, of whose souls you had engaged 
to have a care, and whose sweat and property gave 
you a living. In order to compel you to do this: in or- 
der to prevent you from being so unjust, as to pocket 
the pay without rendering any services; and in order 
to prevent you from carrying away the produce of 
your livings to spend them elsewere than in your parish, 
the law, which gave you the tithes, bound you to residence, 
under a pecuniary penalty. Nothing could be more rea- 
sonable than this; for, what right had you to the tithes, 
unless you resided amongst the people who paid them? 
In short, you were paid to teach the people, to give them 
religious instruction, to cultivate in their minds the prin- 
ciples of religious faith ; and to do all those things, 



3#6 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

which Joshua Watson, the Wine and Spirit Merchant 
of Mincing lane, is appointed to do. If }-ou had all 
obeyed the law, could Joshua Watson and his tract-men 
have been wanted? What need, for instance, had the 
Rev. Thomas Jephson to make part of a London So- 
ciety for promoting Christian Kyiowledge, if he and all 
the rest of you had resided constantly in your parishes, 
and had taken care of your flocks ? What do you call 
th.em flocks for; and why do you call yourselves Pastors, 
unless you reside with and take care of them? 

Nevertheless, so notorious is your absence from your 
" flocks ;" to such an extent have you disobeyed the law 
of your establishment and incurred its penalties, that, 
act after act were passed, from 1799 to 1 803, to screen 
you from the just vengeance of the outraged law. New 
indulgences were granted you in 1803. But, you diso- 
beyed even the new and indulgent law. And, again in 1814, 
act after act were again passed to screen you again ! 
Does the parliament act thus by any other part of the 
people ? If this be to be the case, what law is there to 
make you do your duty? 

I cannot refrain from mentioning (for, perhaps, the 
thousandth time) the sums that you have, of late years, 
received out of the taxes, over and above the amount of 
all the tithes, all the manors, all the lands, and all the 
houses, which constitute what vulgarly is called " church 
property;" but which is public property, the use of which 
is given to you in consideration of your teaching those 
very things which Joshua Watson is now delegated to 
teach. The sums, I say, that you have had out of the 
taxes, over and above the " church property," amount- 
ing, as we have before seen, to eight millions of pounds 
a year. These sums were, 100,000/. a year, granted 
by the people at Westminster, and raised in taxes upon 
the people. Sums granted for the u relief of the poor cler- 
gy of the Church of England!" Good God! Two Bi- 
shops have lately died, leaving nearly three hundred 
thousand pounds each ! And yet, this wretched, this 
starving people, is called upon, and compelled, to give 
money to the " poor clergy 1 '' of this Church! This was 
carried on by the people at Westminster for about six- 
teen years: and was dropped only the year bejore last. — 
Perceval began it; and accordingly they of you wI;o 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. ' 357 

belonged to the Diocess of Salisbury did, in 1812, in an 
address to the Prince Regent, " condole" with his Roy- 
al Highness on what they call the " assassination of that 
upright Minister, and one of the brightest examples of 
public and private virtue. 1 '' They well knew that this 
same Perceval had been accused of seat-selling; they 
knew that Mr. Haddocks offered to produce proof of 
this at the bar of the House; they knew that Perceval 
dared not deny the fact, and that he besought the House 
not to hear the evidence; they knew that the House did 
not hear it; and yet, the Bishop, Dean and Chapter and 
Clergy of the Diocess of Salisbury, had the front to de- 
clare this man to be " one oj the brightest examples of 
jmblic virtue!" 

But, though he had been charged with selling a 
seat, he had proposed and carried on these grants 
of money to the Clergy. And, now, Parsons, do you 
think that this money is not to be repaid? You 
can find time to be Justices of the Peace, while you 
call on us to send money to the Wine and Brandy 
Merchant, that he may te#ch us religion. You seem to 
study the law ; and, do you think that this aifair, that 
this long reckoning, will be settled without your being 
called upon to repay the sixteen hundred thousand 
pounds, taken out of the taxes, to be given to you? 
There was a law for it. Oh, yes! And so there was 
for the works of Empson and Dudley. Law for it! 
Aye, and there is law for banishing men, and for shut- 
ting men up in their houses from sunset to sunrise. 
Law! to be sure; and there is law to " indemnify" all 
the stern-path people of 1817. Law enough; but do 
you imagine that we shall ever consent to the reducing 
of the interest of the Debt in the amount of one single 
penny, without first making you pay back these sixteen 
hundred thousand pounds ? Total ruin, however, falls 
on the aristocracy, on those who exulted at the laws to 
screen you and to give you our money ; total ruin falls on 
them, unless the inter est of the Debt be greatly reduced. 
And this reduction cannot, will not, shall not, take 
place, without your refunding the sixteen hundred 
thousand pounds. 



358 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

Only mind what a wicked, what an odious, what a 
detestable act it would be, to take away part of the 
debt, until you were made to refund. Where did the 
sixteen hundred thousand pounds come from? We say, 
out of the taxes, because it was public money. But, 
the Government was harrowing money and contracting 
debt every year, during the period that these sixteen hun- 
dred thousand pounds were given to you. If there had 
been none of the public money given you, there would 
not, of course, needed so mvirfi to be borrowed. Conse- 
quently, the money was borrowed to be given to you. — 
These sixteen hundred thousand pounds make part of 
ike debt. And, shall those who let the money that was 
given to you, now have their interest taken away from 
them, while you keep the principal? Oh, no! my good 
fire-shovel-hat gentlemen. We will show you how we 
play at this game. In short, is there any one in human 
form, beast enough to suppose that you are to be suffered 
to keep all, while every other -description of persons is 
to be compelled, and must be compelled, to make sacri- 
fices. 

You are the great promoters of the war and the bor<* 
rowing. When the rest of the nation, when even the 
boroughmongers seemed to wish for peace, yow were for 
war. And, can it ever be proposed to reduce the in- 
terest of the Debt, without calling upon you to refund? 
To refund what was given to you at any rate. Aye; 
and that is not all. You will have to refund what you 
received in the way of gift; and you will, moreover, 
have to pay off a part of that great Debt that was con- 
traded on your account. It is notorious that the war 
was to put down French principles. And what were 
French principles ? Why, that titles of nobility and tithes 
ought to be put an end to; and that all that mass of pro- 
perty, called " church-property, ,r was national, or pub- 
lic property, and ought to be sold for the defence of the 
kingdom and for the paying off its debts. Now, we 
went to war, and Obstinately persevered in war, and 
renewed the war, and so went on, till the war had cost 
(besides the taxes raised and expended) nine hundred 
millions in fund-hdlder debt, dead-weight debt, and 
pauper debt. This cannot now be paid without trans- 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 359 

f erring the estates away from the present possessors. We 
must lop a part off, then. Aye; but not while you, for 
whom half the expense, half the debt, was contracted; 
not till you have given up what you have, if your all be 
necessary. 

This is what poses, perplexes, embarrasses, torments 
you ! You are become bitter beyond expression towards 
me, who remind the people of these things, and who 
say positively, that the interest of the Debt shall not be 
reduced, until you refund the sixteen hundred thousand 
pounds that the people at Westminster gave to you out 
of the public money. What! get this sum of money as 
a gift, besides all the tithes and other things; and come 
to us after all this for money to send to the Mincing- 
- lane Wine and Spirit Merchant, that he may lay it out 
in teaching the children their religious duty! Faith! 
this thing stops : this thing goes no further at this rate. 
Mr. Hume says, that he does not think, that you (in 
England) have too much. Mr. Hume will not do, then. 
Mr. Hume will go on one side, like an old garment. 

Ten thousand times would I rather see the Jews in 
possession of the whole of the estates than see a reduc- 
tion of the Jewr interest without your being first com- 
pelled to refund. If there be no reduction, never can 
the country again face a foe in arms, though that foe 
come up the Thames and attack the Tower. And, " so 
help me God," as Mr. Canning said, I would rather see 
the Tower attacked ; aye, and fall too ; and see the 
country actually conquered, than the a widow a: d or- 
phan" lose part of their interest, until you had refunded 
the sixteen hundred thousand pounds. Oh, no! my 
brave fire-pan hats: never can such a thing be done. I 
shall not see the Tower attacked: I shall see the inter- 
est reduced: and I shall see you refund previous to such 
reduction. 

These, Parsons, are the sayings that you hate me for. 
At Exeter, about 6 months back, (18th Sept.) there was 
Pitt Club Dinner. We shall find something in the 
report (from the Chronicle of the 24th Sept.) applica- 
ble to the subject before us. I will insert it first, and 
then remark upon a passage or two in it. 

" Devon Pitt Club. — The members of this Club 
held their meeting at the Hotel on Thursday (the 18th 



360 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

inst.) at which Sir Trayton Drake presided, with the 
gallant Sir George Collier as Vice President. About 
fifty sat down to a most excellent dinner. On the cloth 
being removed, the President proposed the health of 
4 The King,' which was drunk with four times four, and 
was succeeded by c God save the King,' verse and cho- 
rus. The following toasts were given in succession, 
with the usual cheering and appropriate glees: — 

" < The Duke of York and the Army,' < Duke of Cla- 
rence and the Navy,' ' The rest of the Royal Family.' 

" The President said he had next to propose a toast 
intimately connected with the object of their Meeting, 
and which, he was persuaded, would be received by 
deep feelings of respect. The Minister whose birth 
they were met to commemorate, and whose name should 
inspire gratitude in every Englishman's breast, had stu- 
died his country's good as his only object; and to his 
system, which had been followed by succeeding Ad- 
ministrations, was owing the glorious attitude of Eng- 
land among the nations of the world, which she had 
maintained amidst the concussion of empires, and still 
preserved. History could not record a brighter exam- 
ple of statesman-like integrity than that illustrious indi- 
vidual had furnished; and he knew that every heart 
present would respond in unison with his, in paying a 
silent but sincere tribute of respect, ' To the immortal 
memory of the Right Hon. William Pitt.' " 

a The Rev. William Radford, Rector of Lapford, 
said, he should do injustice to his feelings if he were to 
remain silent on the mention of that great Statesman, 
whose transcendent abilities and political integrity had, 
Kext to Divine Providence, secured the independence 
of these kingdoms, and restored liberty to Europe. In 
the times of domestic disturbance, his principles opera- 
ted towards the promotion of loyal and proper feelings, 
and ultimately restored harmony. But, though great 
danger had been quelled, an evil spirit was still lurking 
about, endeavouring to accomplish by artifice what force 
could not effect. The jarring principles of designing 
men had been made subservient to individual interests. 
He (Mr. Radford) was aware that party spirit would 
carry men even beyond the bounds of common courtesy; 
but he never could have supposed that individuals of 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 361 

rank would have countenanced such scoundrels as Car- 
iikj Hone, and Cobbett — wretches who had nothing to 
lose, but every thing to gain, and who would willingly 
play a desperate game to obtain their object. That 
gentlemen of exalted station in society should aid such 
adventurers, was downright suicide of character, and 
they would /do well to recollect, that the same princi- 
ples, called into action, which brought the unfortunate 
Louis to the scaffold, would ultimately draw the life- 
blood of a Russell [hear, hear.'J. They were not now 
met under any specious pretence, but to indulge in 
those feelings of grateful remembrance which were due 
to a man who equally respected the altar, the throne, 
and the people. He trusted they would all imitate his 
worth — his talents they could not hope to attain — but 
in defence of their country, their King, and their God, he 
was sure they would follow his example to the latest 
period of their lives — [cheering"] 

Weil done, Parson Radjord! You are a fair speci- 
Aiien; a sample; a thing for us to judge by. Now you 
know very well, that I dissent openly from the notions, 
about religion, of Mr. Carlile. You do not know any 
thing at all of my publications; or, you know, that I 
have, in print, expressed, in a Letter to Mr. Carlile, 
my dissent from his opinions, not only as to religion, 
but also as to republican government. You know this 
very well. You know also, that I have written Twelve 
Sermons, more of which, perhaps, have been sold than 
of all the sermons that the Church Parsons ever pub- 
lished since the " Reformation." You know, that 
these sermons are all founded on passages in the Bible. 
This you know; and what (if the above report be true) 
a liar, what a malignant wretch, what a scoundrel you 
must be, Parson Radford! To be sure, I as well as 
Mr. Carlile, laid on upon the Right Reverend Father 
in God, Percy Jocelyn, Doctor of Divinity, and his Sol- 
dier. But, it is not less true, that Mr. Carlile and I 
do not agree as to matters of religion and as to forms of 
government I do not personally know him; but I have 
always heard, that he is a very honest and sober and in- 
dustrious and virtuous man; and I know well, that he. 
and his family and servants have been most cruelly 



36& PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

treated, and that I most cordially detest his and their 
persecutors of every description. And I further de- 
clare, that, if I ever have the power, I will do my hest 
towards obtaining- for him and his family and servants 
ample justice. But still there is no apology for you„ 
Parson Radford. You knew that you were inculcating 
a lie ; that you were sending a lie about the world. You., 
wiihoutany provocation, called me wretch and scoundrel. 
I will punish you for it, Parson, in the only way in 
which I, at present, can get at you. 

And you were one of those, were you, Parson Rad- 
ford, who called upon the people to give money to be 
sent up to the Wine and Brandy Merchant, for him to 
lay out in teaching us the principles of the established 
church. Faith! this was unnecessary, Parson. We 
know the principles pretty well. You and Parson 
Morritt let us see what they are. Joshua, may 
hold his peace. What do you mean, Parson, by " de- 
fending God?" The God that men in general worship 
is not supposed to want defenders. The God that you 
talk of must be a poor thing; he never can be the Al- 
mighty. The all-powerful can stand in need of no de- 
fenders, and especially such poor muckworms as are 
seen at Pitt-Clubs. You are guilty of base blasphemy, 
Parson. Yours is real blasphemy; and the writing of 
Mr. Carlile is not. So that you are (if the report of 
your speech be true) a base, blaspheming blackguard. 
You are a degree worse than Symthies, the butcher's son. 

" Ji.n evil spirit lurking about : designing men." Poor 
fool ! How comes there to be such a spirit after all your 
" teachings" all your " victories" and all your "glories?™ 
Poor sot! a " spirit lurking about" indeed! This is like 
your kidney: at once malignant and nonsensical. And, 
then, there was the wise President and the " gallant" 
Vice-President. They know, I dare say, what they 
toast and bawl for. But only think of their bragging of 
the " glorious attitude" which the country " still pre- 
serves." This is pretty well, at a moment when the 
country is really prostrate at the feet of France. Sin- 
gular enough, too, that the " gallant Vice-President" 
should have already figured as a cut-throat ! There was, 
I think, quite proof enough of this fellows being insane^ 



PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 363 

when lie was seen, at this Club, a cat's-paw to Parson 
Bad ford. 

However, you are tackled, Parson. The debt is your 
luckier. This debt is with us; and you go the way of 
all flesh. Something about reducing the interest of the 
debt; or about altering the value of money ; something 
about one or the other must take place. I do not care 
which; and I am in no hurry about either. I am quite 
-ready for either, when it comes, but I do not think, that 
it would be an advantage to us to have it too soon. I think 
it would be best, that all the old stupid, stinking Jolter- 
heads should be ousted by the Jews, first ; and that 
the Radicals should then come and deal with Mosey! 
Squeeze him like a sponge; and settle matters accord- 
ing to principles of justice. The little Jolterheads and 
fire-pans, who have, for years and years, been place- 
■liunting for their sons and brothers and other relations, 
are now sadly put to it. They see the spring cut off. 
There is nothing to give away. The thing begins to 
be so tame, and so bareboned, that its former adorers 
view it with affright. I should like to know, whether 
Joshua, our great teacher, have any snug corner in the 
concerns of the thing. So much zeal and piety must 
merit some reward. His brother, indeed, has three 
or four livings in that Church, the true principles of 
which Joshua is to teach us. This brother has the li- 
vings of Digswell, Hackney, and Homerton, and he 
is Archdeacon of St. Jllbans. Well said, brother J. 
James Watson ! Joshua must be wanted to help to 
teach some, at any rate, of J. James's people; but, if J. 
James had but one living, and there were three other 
parsons for the others, Joshua's services would not be 
necessary. Aye, but then, brother J. James, the " Ve- 
nerable J. James, Doctor of Divinity," would not get 
the tithes and so forth of the four benefices ! — Poh! It is 
nonsense, Parsons, to say any more about it. You 
know how it is, and we know how it is. Parson Mor- 
ritt has given us the true practical illustration of the 
thing; his tithes become " due," as it is called, and he, 
without any disguise, sends armed men to the spot to en- 
force the collecting of the money. The people resist; 
the armed men shoot; some are killed and some woundeU 



ZQ4 PROTESTANT REFORMATION. 

m both sides; the battle is bloody; but, at last, tbe par- 
son gets his tithes; and "the Church, as by law esta- 
blished," triumphs ! 

In conclusion, Parsons, I have two things to mention: 
First, that I should like to be informed, whether 
Joshua hav§ any of the public money himself, and 
whether he have any sons, or any other relations, besides 
brother, the venerable J. James, whose zeal has led them 
to serve their country. I wisk for information on >this> 
subject. Perhaps some correspondent can give it me. 
[ also wish to know, whether our teacher, Joshua, still 
sells wine and spirits, and whether this traffic, if carried 
on at all, be still carried on in Mincing-lane. Second, 
I have to mention, that I shall, about December next, 
send Joshua, in Manuscript, a religious tract, written 
by me, for the use of the JSTational Schools, and that, if 
our teacher, Joshua, do not cause it to be published, i" 
mil. And, it is, further, my intention to supply Joshua 
with one a month, during the next winter and spring. 
In every case, if Joshua do not publish, / will. And,, 
then we shall see, what Joshua is made of; and, he re- 
fuse to publish, we shall see, who will distribute the 
greatest number of tracts, Joshua or L 

I must defer, till another opportunity, my remarks on 
the Burial Bill, and on the grant for the building of new 
Church of England Churches: and, Parsons, "so," as 
the King says, " I bid you very heartily farewell," for 
the present, with a promise to return to you with all 
convenient speed. 

WILLIAM COBBETT. 



LETTER 



S1&& OP EOLEUj 

ON HIS HAPPY CONVERSION THROUGH THE MEANS OF 
THE BIBLE SOCIETY. 



Q So he was exceeding sorrowful; hut it pleased God in 
that society to inform his mind with the right princi- 
ples. He retired to his closet y poured forth his wishes 
to the God of mercy, and it pleased that God to listen 
to his prayers, and to lead him into the way of truth 
and life" — The Earl of Rodeo's Speech at a Meeting of 
the Bible Society. May, 1824. 



Bagshot, June 10, 1824, 
My Lord, 

The Public have read with great interest the ac- 
count of your Lordship's conversion. This conversion 
it is that has induced me to make some remarks on this 
Bible Society and its proceedings, and I address my- 
self to you for reasons that will be obvious enough -be- 
fore I have done. The meeting, at which this speech 
of yours was made, was only one of many, held about 
the same time, in the pious Wen. There were many 
others, some of which, if I have room, I shall notice 
in the course of this letter. 

My work may, I hope, be expected to live till all 
this monstrous stuff shall be put down; and it is pleasing 
to me to reflect, that it may then be said, that there 
was one man, who, in spite of all the powers of cant, 
had the sense and the courage to set his face against it. 

This Meeting is called an anniversary Meeting; so 
that, it seems that we have it yearly — I am going to 
state my opinions of the undertaking, and I shall do it. 
31* 



366 LETTER TO THE EARL OP RODEN, 

without any sort of reserve. I shall ask to have point- 
ed out to me, what is, or can be, the use of it; and 
I shall, I think, point out many mischiefs that it 
must naturally produce. But, first of all, let me insert 
the report of the proceedings on which I am about to 
comment. 

The Twentieth Anniversary of the British and Fo- 
reign Bible Society, was held yesterday at the Freema- 
sons' Tavern. The room was crowded before eleven 
o'clock, at which period several Noblemen and Gen- 
tlemen entered the room. We observed on the plat- 
form, the Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, Lord 
Gambier, Lord Calthorpe, Charles Grant, Esq. M. P, 
and many other distinguished persons. 

The President Lord Teignmouth, was unanimously 
called to the chair. 

The Secretary, (the Rev. Mr. Bramble) then pro- 
ceeded to read an abstract of the Society's proceed- 
ings for the last year, by which it appears that the 
progress of the Society has increased since the last an- 
nual meeting. 

While the Secretary was reading the Report, Lord 
Harrowby entered the room, and was received by the 
Meeting with the warmest expressions of applause; 
Lord Roden, shortly afterwards entered, and was re- 
ceived with similar demonstrations of applause. The 
accounts from South America were peculiarly gratify- 
ing, " her fields," in the language of the Report, " were 
already white for the harvest;" but, indeed, there was 
no quarter of the world from which the accounts were 
not equally encouraging. The accounts from the friends 
of this Society throughout England, proved that the 
cause was rapidly advancing throughout this island, 
In Scotland too the Society was advancing with a 
steady progress. And Ireland had not been neglected. 
— Jlpplause. 

The Earl of Harrowby rose to move that the report 
— and abstract of which they had just heard read, 
•might be printed. The Meeting would permit him to 
make a few observations, (hear.) It was gratifying to 
him, that while our benevolence crossed the Line, and 
wandered forth to visit all who were benighted and 



• 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF R0DEN. 367 

ignorant, our own people at home were not neglected 
or forgotten. It was very gratifying to him to see that 
the state of Ireland was not neglected; that was a 
country in which their exertions would be most useful- 
ly, and in which, indeed, necessarily they ought to la- 
bour. Ireland would not, one day or other be insensi- 
ble of such exertions. 

The Earl of Roden said, that the Noble Lord who had 
just sat down had so ably touched on some parts of the Re- 
port, that he had left him little to say, except to second the 
resolution, that the Report in question, to an extract of 
which they had with so much gratification attended, 
should be printed under the direction of the Committee, 
But he could not help expressing his gratitude that he 
was now permitted, with the Meeting, to witness the 
Twentieth Anniversary of the British and Foreign Bi- 
ble Society. (Cheers.) — It would ill become him to take 
up the time of the Meeting in entering into the details 
of the progress o£ the Society, and of the blessings to 
be derived from it; but there was one simple fact 
which he could not omit stating to the assembly. I 
will not, said the Noble Lord, say how many years 
since, I knew a man who was involved in all the scenes 
of fashionable dissipation which the Irish metropolis 
doth most abundantly supply. It was his chief object 
to look for pleasure, and to stifle the thoughts of futuri- 
ty. He had no care for heavenly things, but in this 
world's worthlessness he took especial pleasure. It 
happened to this individual, to whom I allude, to be 
present at one of the Meetings of your Society in 
Dublin, he was led there from idle curiosity; and, 
ashamed to be detected in such a place, he retired to a 
corner of the room. While that man stood there so se- 
cretly and so concealed, he heard opinions delivered 
which were indeed new to him, and which penetrated 
his soul, for he then felt that if these sentiments were 
correct, his eternal misery was well nigh accomplish- 
ed. — He was not an old man, but years flew apace; so 
thought the individual to whom I am alluding; and 
w T hat then was to become of his immortal soul? So 
he was exceedingly sorrowful, but it pleased God 
in that Society to inform his mind with right principles^ 



368 LETTER TO THE EARL OP RODEN. 

for a good man was there, and he spoke of the power 
of God unto salvation, and he cautioned that meeting, 
and every soul there, to build their faith upon the Bi- 
ble, and not upon the words of man (hear ;) and he 
told them that to all who sought the assistance of the 
Holy Spirit, that assistance would not be denied, for 
that God hath promised " to open to them who had 
knocked;" and that by prayer and supplication the 
word of God would be made manifest to all. This in- 
dividual, therefore, retired to his closet; poured forth 
his wishes to the God of mercy, and it pleased that God 
to listen to his prayers, and to lead him to the way amid 
the truth and the life;, and though I cannot describe to 
you the joy and peace of mind which that man expe- 
rienced, yet will I say, that in all his griefs, and God 
hath given him his share, he has never despaired since 
that day of the blessings and protection of Heaven. 
There, in the Bible, he has found a protection from the 
storm which few have felt more keenly, but I trust few 
with more perfect resignation— (Applause.) That in- 
dividual is permitted this day to have the honour of 
addressing you (loud applause ;) he is permitted now 
to declare the obligations which he owes to an Anniver- 
sary meeting of your Society. The Noble Lord, in 
concluding, expressed his gratitude to the Society for 
their efforts in Ireland, and gave to the resolution his 
most cordial support. 

The Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry moved the 
next resolution, " That the thanks of the Meeting 
should be given to Lord Teignmouth, President of the 
Society, for his unceasing attention to the interests of 
the institution." The Noble and Rev. Prelate, in ad- 
verting to Colombia, stated that in consequence of the 
progress of the Society in that quarter of the globe, 
that despotism, civil and religious, had covered that 
Sand, and impaired her moral energies — had made it the 
seat of superstition — the very fastness of papal power 
(cheers) — but , the storm had at length subsided, and 
they were now permitted, under the guidance of Him, 
" who guided the whirlwind and directed the storm," 
to spread through that country the glorious tidings of 
* c peace on earth, and good will toward men." — (Cheers.) 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN. 369 

A French Peer, whose name we could not ascertain, 
was here introduced to the meeting-. He stated that the 
Bible Society in Paris, felt most grateful to the British 
and Foreign Society for their beneficent assistance. He 
assured the Society that the Protestants of France were 
attached to the cause of Evangelical Religion. — (Ap- 
plause.) 

Before I proceed to comment upon this curious mat- 
ter, I shall make a few general observations with respect 
to the utility of this Society and its exertions; for though 
it seems to be taken for granted, that these exertions 
must do some good, I question the fact, and I not only 
doubt the good of the acts themselves, but I also ques- 
tion the goodness of the motives. 

One thing is, I think, very clear; namely, the Par- 
sons, Bishops, and all the rest of that tribe, whether 
they belong to the Church, the Methodists, the Pres- 
byterians, the Baptists, the Seceders, the Independents, 
the Separatists, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the So- 
einians, the Universalists, the Unitarians, the Muggle- 
tonians, or the New Sect, which some people call the 
Humbugonians; whatever sect, swarm, or nest, people 
may belong to, it must be contemptibly ridiculous to 
pay preachers, if the professed objects of this Society 
be not a wretched humbug. 

We are told by this Society, that the Bible is every 
thing; that they have got several new versions of it: 
that they have converted already by it a large part of 
the South Americans; that the bible is hard at work 
converting the Irish: that, in short, here is a book 
through which God himself speaks to every one; and 
that you, the worthies of this Bible Society, are going 
on spreading about this book, and that you will persevere- 
in your exertions, " until the whole earth be filled with 
the Gospel of God." 

This is either true or it is a humbugging lie: if the 
latter, there may still be occasion for giving money to 
parsons and the like; but if it be true, it must be a sort 
of blasphemy to suffer a parson to talk to you about re- 
ligion; for, what is this short of saying to God — " We 
have your own word here before us; but that is not 
enough for us; we must have a parson to save us from 



370 XETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN. 






Obeli ; we have a greater opinion of the parson's word 
&han we have of yours." Talk of blasphemy indeed. 
Where will you find blasphemy equal to this? Mr. Jo- 
seph Gurney, the sleek Secretary of the Norfolk and 
Norwich Bible Association, who is, I suppose, a sort 
of Hickory Quaker, observed, that the Scriptures 
given as they were by inspiration, might be read by 
themselves, without note or comment. Ah ! sleek Jo- 
seph ! You were for getting rid of the interpreters. I 
join you, sleek Joseph, with all my heart; and if I come 
to a determination, which I must, that this is God's own 
word, — I also come to a determination that this ought 
to be put into the hands of every man, how can I be 
beast enough to perceive that no parson can be neces- 
sary ? 

Lord Harrowby (for all now join in the great work,) 
seemed to be highly delighted with the success, as he 
called it, of the Society. His Lordship has a brother, 
who is a Bishop, with a pretty fat income, and I should 
be glad to hear from that Bishop if every man ought to 
have the bible put into his hands. It is beastly to put it 
into his hands if you are not well assured that he can 
■understand it. It is perfectly beastly to put it into his 
hands, unless you are persuaded he can understand it. 
If he cannot read it and comprehend it, and if he be not 
convinced of this, what a shocking piece of sham to put 
the book into his hands; and if you be convinced of 
this, you are convinced that he has God for his teacher, 
what need has he of a Bishop, though that Bishop's 
name may be Rider? There was it seems a Bishop 
present and speechifying at this meeting. He is called 
the Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry, what his name 
is I do not know; but if I had been present, I would 
have asked him what was the use of his office, if this 
Bible Society was working for good. 

The business of the priest is to teach the people re- 
ligions; to teach the children especially; to hold, in 
fact, a religious school; to tell the flock what is the will 
of God; to keep God's word in their possession, and to 
he the interpreters of him to the people. There is 
common sense in this. There is consistency in it. — 
Here no one pretends that the people themselves Qan 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEtf. 371 

understand the word of God ; and , therefore, that word 
is not put into their hands. It is perfectly monstrous 
to say to a man, take that book, it contains the words 
of eternal life, they are the words which God himself 
addresses to you, for the purpose of saving your soul; 
but, mark me, you must give one-tenth of all your 
corn, and milk, and sheep, and pigs, and cows, to a par- 
son, in order that he may teach you religion. — To talk 
thus to a man, argues insanity, or hypocrisy incompre- 
hensible. 

I am of opinion that the printing and publishing of 
the Bible has done a great deal of mischief in the 
world. No matter how good the contents of the book 
may be, no matter how true the history of it, no matter 
how excellent its precepts and examples. — Like most 
other good things, it is possible for it to be so applied 
as to produce mischievous effects. And what was the 
first effect of this printing and publishing? The split- 
ting up of the people, who had before been all of one 
faith, into numerous sects, each having a faith different 
from all the rest. However this really seems to be, by 
some persons, regarded as a happy circumstance. This 
patch and piebald work in religion is spoken of by some 
as affording to the Almighty the pleasing spectacle of 
great variety ! 

But come let us try this a little. What ! a variety of 
religious creeds pleasing to God! Will any one open- 
ly hold that God delights in lies? Yet he must delight 
in lies, if he delights in a variety of beliefs. There 
can be but one true belief, all the rest must be false. Ev- 
ery deviation from the truth is a Jie. Each must be- 
lieve that all the other sects are on the high road to per- 
dition. To think in any other way about the matter, is 
to consider all faith and all religion as a mere farce. And 
yet there are men to pretend that a variety of faith is 
pleasing to the God of truth. 

There can be but one true religion. All the rest 
must be false. It is dismal enough, then, to know that 
there are forty of them, or thereabouts. The printing 
and publishing of the Bible may possibly have estab- 
lished the one true religion; but, at any rate, it must 
have created thirty -eight false religions. There ca» 



§12 LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN. 

be but one true one, mind. I beg you may not forget 
that; so that, this printing and publishing have caused 
thirty-eight false religions to rise up, at any rate. — 
Whether it caused the one true one to rise up is 
more than I shall attempt to determine. But we may 
make this observation, that, if the Catholic religion was 
not the true religion, it seems strange, that it should 
have existed all over Europe for so many centuries; it 
seems strange too, that those who protest against that 
religion, should at the end of more than two centuries 
of preaching and printing and publishing about it; and 
and after having caused Europe to be deluged in blood; 
it is strange, I say, that these Protestants should still be 
found in so contemptible a minority. 

Insist, my Lord Roden, that the Bible-spreading reli- 
gion is the true one; and then ask yourself how it hap- 
pens, that in your own country, where the property of 
the ancient church has been taken and given to its sub- 
verters by law, those subverters split into forty differ- 
ent sects, form at the end of two hundred years, only a 
seventh part of the nation. What says the word of God, 
which you are so industrious in circulating? " One 
faith, one church." And again, u I will build my church 
upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 
it." Look at your own country then my Lord and say 
whether this promise has not then been fulfilled. 

The influence of this Society of yours appears to be 
similar in its operation and effects. Its benevolence and 
its success have reached China. Its translation of the 
scriptures have gone forth to enlighten and convert the 
nanves of Asia. Lord Harrow by tells us in the exulta- 
tion of his piety to look at the works of the Society in 
the Pacific Ocean; to look at the licentious inhabitants of 
the islands in that Ocean; inhabitants whom the Society 
have made anxious to receive and profit by the scrip- 
tures "of the living and true God, and Jesus Christ, 
whom he hath sent "—The pious President of the 
Council, after having again bade you look to ycur work 
in the vast empire of China, concluded with observing, 
that the success " was the Lord's doing, and marvellous 
indeed, was that success in his eyes." — The Report of 
the Society told you, that the Report from South Ame- 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN. 373 

vica was peculiarly gratifying, that her fields were al- 
ready white for the harvest." 

Now, my Lord, is it not something strange. You 
will please to understand me, my Lord; — I by no means 
say that these reports and statements are impudent lies. 
But, with the greatest deference and respect, my Lord, 
I ask you, who are an Irishman, and who ought to under- 
stand a pretty deal about that country, seeing that you 
receive (as your noble father before you) what I call a 
thundering sum of money every year out of the taxes, 
the effects of which upon poor Ireland are pretty noto- 
rious, I ask you, my Lord, whether it be not something 
strange that this converting Society of yours; that this 
Society, which as the wonderful President of the Coun- 
cil observes, has been so successful in the Pacific Ocean; 
in the vast empire of China, that has made the fields of 
South America already white for the harvest; is it not 
somewhat strange, I say, my Lord, that this Society 
when it comes to talk about Ireland, has no more to say 
than that Ireland has not been neglected, and that " Ire- 
land will, one day or another, (at least Lord Harrowby 
says so,) not be insensible to such exertions." — One clay 
or other! Not insensible! What the devil, then, while 
you have been making such conversions in the vast em- 
pire of China, and among the frolicksome damsels in 
the Islands of the Pacific; while you have made the fields 
of South America already white for the harvest, though, 
as even the Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry says, 
those fields were " the very fastness of Popery/' again, 
my Lord, let me ask you, is it not strange that while this 
Society has been converting half the world, it has not as 
yet; it may, as Lord Harrowby says, " one day or 
other," not be " insensible to the Society's exertions;" 
"but what I have to say, my Lord, is this; is it not strange 
indeed, that this Society which has been converting so 
large a portion of mankind, should never as yet have 
been able to convert one single Irishman. 

" You lie, you villian, scoundrel; jacobin radical ras- 
cal !" I think I hear some enraged Orangeman exclaim, 
and then ask me, with lips drawn up, head pushed for- 
ward, teeth looking like those of a dog that is just go- 



374 LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN, 

mg to bite you, " has not the Society converted my 
Lord Roden?" Aye, you teef, and in Dublin, too?" 

Gently, Good Orangeman, I beg his Lordship's par- 
don. I had forgotten the conversion of his Lordship. I 
allow (because I cannot dispute the word of the noble 
peer) whose word of honour, you know, is fully equal, 
(and upon my soul I sincerely believe it,) to the oath of 
a thousand common Orangemen. The noble Lord has 
said it; and therefore I believe that he was converted by 
the Society. But pray, observe, good Orangemen, (and 
do not my friend, foam and grind your teeth at such a 
rate:) pray, I say, observe, good Orangeman, that it was 
not a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Pagan converted to Christ- 
ianity: nor was it a Catholic, converted to a Protestant; 
but a sinner, a mere sinner, converted to a saint! 

This is a very different thing from the other sorts of 
conversion. Observe, too, that this most blessed effect 
was produced by talking to the Noble Lord, and not by 
his reading; for the noble person himself says, that he 
cared not for heavenly things, " till he heard opinions de- 
livered which penetrated his soul; that made him per- 
ceive that his eternal misery was well nigh accomplish- 
ed." The noble person expressly says, " that the good 
man spoke of the power of God and of salvation" — 
It is strange that the noble person should never have 
cared about heavenly things before, seeing that he had 
an uncle who was a Right; Reverend Father in God, 
and who was first Bishop of Ferns, and afterwards Bish- 
op of Clogher. This, however, aside for the present; it 
was, as I said before, the changing of an Irish sinner in- 
to a saint, and not the changing of an Irish Roman Ca- 
tholic into a Protestant. 

It is of this latter sort of conversation, that Ireland, 
my Lord Roden, stands so much in need, in order to 
give her a chance of tranquillity. How is it then my 
Lord, that this Society, which, by means of its compa- 
ratively puny subscriptions; that this Society, which 
has made the fields white for the harvest amongst the 
Catholics of South America, where as this Bishop of 
Litchfield and Coventry tells us, Popery had its fast- 
nesses; how is it my Lord, that this Society, alone, can 
thus carry on the conversion of the Catholics of South 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEtf. 375 

America, and cannot, even with the aid of all the Irish 
Bishops and Parsons, convert one single Irish Catholic; 
nay, how is it, my Lord, that this same Society, aided 
by all those Bishops and Parsons, cannot prevent the 
pennyless popish Priests from converting- the Protest- 
ants to be Catholics; and that too, to such an extent as 
to threaten to leave eighteen Bishops, and above two 
thousand Parsons without any congregation at all! 

Again, I say, that I mean not to assert, that the above 
inserted report and speeches contain a parcel of most 
abominable lies. I do not pretend to assert that, my 
Lord; but, I most flatly assert, that if the statement m 
the above report be true, the non-conversion of the Irish 
is the most surprising thing that ever was heard of in the 
world. 

Another observation I have to make, is, that the cir- 
culation of Bibles, like every other measure, ought to be 
judged of by its effects. If the effects be good, the 
measure may be called good; if bad, the measure ought 
to be called bad. As to the effects of the measure 
amongst the Chinese, or amongst the gay lasses of Ota- 
heite, no argument can be built on that, because we have 
no evidence^ except that which we derive from your 
missionaries, a sort of evidence only aclmissable in a 
court of cant, and to which, therefore, I take leave to 
object. We must confine ourselves to evidence to be 
collected in this kingdom. And what evidence is this 
to be? The opinion of this man or that man is worth 
nothing. The observation, or pretended observation, of 
individuals, is likewise worth nothing, in such a case; 
men, however upright they may be, generally think that 
they see their own opinions verified. Even in resort- 
ing for evidence to the state of society, we must take 
care that our instances be not partial. 

But let us try your Bible work by experience and let 
that experience be proved to us by general and striking- 
facts which nobody can deny. Twenty years, then, is, 
you tell us, the age of your society. You tell us that 
your measures must produce great and general effect. — 
What, then, has been the effect. We have no positive 
proof that it has produced any effect at all. We cannot 
produce any proof of its bad effects; but we have proof," 



336 LETTER T© THE EARL OF RODBN. 

-enough that it lias produced no good effects, seeing thai 
we may date from Pitt's birth, a vast increase of misery, 
wickedness and degradation; an enormous increase or 
pauperism and of crimes; a doubling of the size of goals; 
more than a doubling of the persons transported; and 
more than a doubling of the persons hanged. Five times 
the number of persons sent to goal, and three times the 
number of persons convicted of crimes; a fourfold 
increase of misery in England, and tenfold increase of 
misery in Ireland. 

You will say that the circulating of bibles is charge- 
able with none of these; and this may be so: but if this 
circulation of bibles be contemporary with this constant 
increase of evil, it remains for you to show that the cir- 
culation of bibles has produced no part of that increase \ 
while we, on our part, have a right to presume in favour 
of the affirmative of the preposition. If the measure 
bad been one of great and extensive utility, its benefits 
must have been felt in a greater or less degree. The 
state of the people would have been better for it; but 
that state has, upon an average of years, been getting 
worse and worse, till at last one third of them are allow- 
ed to be half naked and half starved, while^ the greater 
part of the rest are in a state but very little better. The 
bibles had, perhaps, nothing to do with the matter; but 
at any rate, men were never shut up in their houses 
from sunset to sunrise, and never transported without a 
trial by jury, until the birth of this society; so that if it 
has not been the cause of, it has come in company with 
the greatest calamities and oppressions that the country 
ever knew. 

The Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry seemed to 
have a peculiar delight in the conversions that the Soci- 
ety has made or pretends to have made in Spanish Ame- 
rica. He said that he congratulated the Meeting on 
the prospects now opening to their view in Colombia. 
The Bishop did not tell us precisely what these pros- 
pects were; but he said that we were now permitted to 
" spread through that country the glorious tidings of 
peace on earth, and good will to men." Peace, sayest 
thou, Right Rev. Father in God? Peace!— Why what 
hopes have we of selling our cottons, and our guns, pis- 
tols and swords; what hopes have we of doing this, ex- 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN. 377 

cept through the means of a bloody civil war. It is not 
peace, Mr. Bishop, but really and literally a " sword" 
that we are sending to the people. Are you for this revo- 
lution, are you Bishop? Why were you not, for the re- 
volution in France ? You rail against the Popish power in 
South America; but were you not one of those who ap- 
plauded the war, waged for the purpose of restoring 
the House of Bourbon and the Pope, and of necessity, 
the Catholic Religion? The Bishop talks a good deal 
about South America having been the seat of supersti- 
tion; and yet the Bishop heard you patiently enough 
give an account of your miraculous conversion. But 
the Bishop talked also of the " despotism, civil and re- 
ligious," in South America. I do not know who this 
Bishop is, but if I cannot get at him to ask him, some- 
body else may. The Bishop talks of despotism, civil 
and religious; he says that we are going to spread 
.through the country the glorious tidings of deliverance. 
Bishop ! turn this way a bit, Bishop, and hear a little 
of what I have got to say about this same despotism: be- 
fore you made the assertion relative to the despot- 
ism, civil and religious of South America, you must, 
doubtless, have read something about it. You must 
have read something about it in some book, and, 
you know, to be sure, where to find that book. Let 
me ask you, then, were the people of South America 
compelled to pay tithes to a sect which had been fasten- 
ed on them by another and more powerful country; 
were they compelled to live under the domination of a 
priesthood, who had taken their own churches aud 
church endowments from them, and whose religion they 
abhorred? Were the people of South America shut up 
in their houses from sunset to sunrise? Was any army 
kept at their own expense to assist in collecting taxes 
from them? Come, come; Right Reverend Father hi 
God, you talk of the Popish despotism in South Ame- 
rica, give us one single instance, if you can, of South 
America having witnessed a battle like that of Skibbe- 
reen! Show us if you can, a book in which it is re- 
corded that the South Americans were half naked, 
and that whole parishes of them received the extreme 
unction preparatory to approaching death from starva- 
32* 



378 LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEK. 

tion; and that, too, at a time when the public authorities 
were declaring that the food was too abundant. 

It may be observed, that our Protestant clergymen 
always kept the worst word that they have to be- 
stow upon Popery. They mortally hate the Catho- 
lic Priests; men who have no wives, and who hoard 
up no fortunes; men who never wear buckskin breeches 
and go a fox-hunting; men who never sally out at the 
head of a squadron to collect tithes; men who do not 
go rambling all the world over, but who live with their 
flocks; men who do not pocket millions in the amount 
of tithes, and hand the religious education of the peo- 
ple over to Joshua Watson, wine and spirit merchant^ 
Mincing-lane, Fenchurch street, London; men who have 
no cant, no evangelical twattle, no sighing, no sobbing, 
and the devil knows what. Our Parsons know very 
well why they dislike the Catholic Priests. They 
know, in short, that, if these Priests had fair play, they 
would carry on conversion indeed. Our Parsons are 
cunning enough; but it does not require much cunning 
to perceive how soon they would be ousted, if the Ca- 
tholic Priests had but a fair chance against them. 

Besides this our parsons remember how their prede- 
cessors first got possession of the good things of the 
Church. They remember old Hal and all his tricks 
and all his wives. They remember his subornings, 
menacings, bribings, cuttings, maimings, hangings, and 
burnings. They remember his sequestrations, and con- 
fiscations. They cannot but look back to him as the 
fountain of their possessions and their power. They, 
therefore, acting upon the Spanish proverb, hate the 
Catholics for this reason as well as the reason before- 
mentioned, Methodist, Quaker, Jumper, Unitarian, Jew, 
Turk, Deist, or Atheist; any thing they like better 
than a Catholic; and Joshua Watson's Society for "pro- 
moting Christian knowledge," publishes ten tracts 
against the Catholics where they publish one against the 
Deists and Atheists. Thus, though nobody else at the 
meeting said any thing about any particular sect, the 
fether in God could not hold his tongue upon the sub- 
ject. He must let his ill will peep out, even upon an 






LETTER TO THE EARL 0F RODEN. 379 

occasion like this, when there was such a boasting of 
universal benevolence and philanthropy. 

But was the Bishop aware that he was giving his 
sanction to rebellion in South America? Is he aware 
that the doctrine which he cooks up for a country near- 
er home? He is not aware of this, perhaps; but to a 
certainty that doctrine will be cooked up. South 
America being at a great distance does not excite so 
much alarm. To seize upon Church property there, 
and to apply it to public purposes, appear to our old 
Pittites to be right enough. It is very strange, that they 
should seem to have entirely forgotten all their outcry 
against the Republicans of France for what they call 
their sacrilege. If it were sacrilege to seize upon 
Church property in France why is it not sacrilege to 
do the like in South America. 

And now let me address myself once more to the 
Bishop. Between the years ninety-three and ninety- 
five, wonderful were the praises which our church be- 
stowed on the French church, and especially the 
priests; but that which appeared the most wonderful 
was their praising the Pope and the Catholic religion. 
The Bishop of Rochester, in a charge to his clergy 
bade them look upon the French Catholic Priests a9 
their brethren. This was wonderful to me, who had al- 
ways been told, that the Pope was the beast with se- 
ven heads and ten horns: that he was the man of sin; 
and that he was the whore of Babylon. I never had 
troubled my head much about the matter, and I com- 
prehended nothing of this abusive application. But, I 
gathered from it all, that the popish clergy were a set 
of very wicked devils, whom it was clearly my duty to 
hate without any further inquiry. I was therefore not 
a little surprised, when I saw the French Catholic 
Priests received as brothers by our parsons. Since that 
my surprise has entirely ceased; for I have found, that 
the parties were not brothers in Christ, but brothers in 
tithes. If the French people confiscated tithes, .the 
English people might do the same. They will do it 
indeed ; but that is not the question at present; if 
the French people confiscated Church property, it was 
evident that sort of property here would be brought in- 



LETTER TO THE EARL OP RODEN. 

to imminent danger. Therefore our pulpits rang with 
revilings against the French people; and, in fact, for 
what? For having put down those who were under 
him, whom our parsons called the beast, the man of 
sin, and the scarlet whore of Babylon, with robe steep- 
ed in the blood of saints. It was an affair of tithe al- 
together: the French people had put down tithes, but 
it would not do to cry out against them for that: there- 
fore they were represented as sacrilegious wretches, 
blasphemers, enemies of God, when all the while they 
were only enemies of tithes. 

This was the foundation of the friendship of our 
parsons for the French Catholic priests. They have 
no such feelings for the priests in South America; 
though the religion of their priests is just the same as 
the religion of the priests of France was. Our par- 
sons do not imagine that we shall take any example 
from the South American people in putting down of 
priests. Our parsons know that that country is far off, 
and our newspapers, by keeping up a constant lying 
backward and forward, will always prevent us from 
knowing what is actually going on. Therefore, they 
iiave no feeling in common with those priests. Then 
the black-coated honies of ours, who always smell 
danger further than any body else, begin to perceive 
that the House of Bourbon is growing strong. They 
know very well that that strength is greatly favourable 
to the Irish Catholics! Yes, though you may think 
that I am smelling for them, my Lord, they do smell 
this for themselves. They know that British weak- 
ness, relative or positive, is strength to the Irish Ca- 
tholics, whom they fear more than at any former time. 
Our parsons, for those reasons, do not like to see an 
increase of the strength of the House of Bourbon; and 
they know well how powerful that House would be- 
come, if Spanish America were completely tranquil- 
ised. Hence, my Lord, the Bishop's joy at " the pros- 
pect now opening in Columbia;" hence his anxious wishes 
for the success of the insurgents; hence his praise of 
the insurgent government! As to the fact, I should not 
wonder on hearing that the government was completely 
overturned; but that is no matter. We have got at a so- 



LETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEff, 381 

Jution of this mysterious language of the Bishop, and 
now we will, for a little, at any rate, take our leave 
of the Father in God, who, perhaps, will not be so 
forward another time in making speeches against Pope- 
ry at the Freemasons' Tavern. 

It is a pity that the reporter was not able to give tf£ 
the name of the French Peer who is said to have been 
present, and who assured the Society, that the Pro- 
testants of France were attached to the cause of evan- 
gelical religion. As you dealt in anecdote, my Lord^ 
I will do the same. After one of the political brawls 
at Paris, one of those little revolutions of parties that 
took place, there was a French physician who saved 
himself by getting off to America in a Philadelphia 
ship. Upon his arrival, he found that the Quakers 
were the richest part of the community, he put on a 
buttonless coat, and a hat with a brim eight inches 
broad, he was not only a " Friend," but a friend occa- 
sionally moved by the spirit; and a French lady and I 
(she pesting him all the while, and I laughing) actually 
heard him preach in the great meeting-house in Phila- 
delphia. He could not speak English; but had an in- 
terpreter! yes, the spirit had an interpreter! — Pray 9 
my Lord Roden, was the spirit that you talked about, 
a spirit of the sort ? — But, to make short of my story, 
John Marselack became the Quaker Physician. He 
got a deal of money, nobody was heard of among the 
Friends but John Marselack. It was such a triumph! 
to make a convert of a celebrated French Physician. 
It was in a small way like your great Society making a 
field in South America white for the harvest! In about 
two years, however, John Marselack's party having 
got uppermost again in France, and John having got 
some pretty good sacks of dollars, and being heartily 
tired of the restraint and mummkry in which he was 
compelled to live, prepared to) return to France.— 
" Friends" were in despair; the^e was such a whining 
and such a sighing ! At last the 1 day came, and with a 
thousand silent squeezes by the hand, and with sweet- 
meats enough to serve twenty families for a year, off 
he came in a fine merchant ship, but not without six el- 
ders to accompany friend John down to the mouth of 



38£ LETTER TO THE EARL OP RODEN. 

the river Delaware, There they took leave of their 
"brother broadbrim. — They went back in the pilot-boat; 
and John before they were half a mile from the ship, 
went down into the cabin, stripped off his Quaker 
garb, and put on a suit of uniform of the national garb 
of France, came upon the deck, with a fiddle in his* 
hand, playing the tune of caira. 

Now, my Lord, far be it from me to suppose that a 
Trench Peer would play you a naughty trick like this; 
but to believe that there is such a thing as a French 
Methodist in the world, I must see him with my own 
eyes, hear him with my own ears, touch him with my 
own hands, and have a certificate of his birth, parent- 
age, and education. A sister society of yours, the 
*' Continental Society," as it calls itself, lament most 
feelingly, that they can do nothing with the French ! 
Frenchmen, I respect you for it. Keep tyranny out of 
your country, if you can; but, with still more care, 
keep from you all-degrading cant. In conclusion, (and 
the time for concluding is come,) let me ask Lord 
Harrowby, who tells us that the spread of the Bible 
is the Lord's work, whether the readers of the Bible 
in China and elsewhere, have ever heard of what pas- 
sed in the House of Commons in the year 1789, 
whether care has been taken to inform them of what 
boroughs mean; whether, in short, the history of the 
country from which these Bibles go, is made known 
to those who are told that the book contains the means 
of their salvation. 

As to yourself, my Lord, (for I must pass over the 
Watson, the Rose, and the Gambier, which I find at the 
foot of the report;) as to yourself, my Lord, I had said 
enough, I thought, already, but happened to see towards 
the close of your speech, that God had given you your 
share, my memory sent me back to the Sinecure List, 
where I found you to be Auditor-General of something 
in Ireland, with the sum of three thousand five hundred 
and sixty-eight pounds a year; and I found that you had 
enjoyed this with your father from the year eighteen 
hundred. I found also that your father was searcher of 
the port of Galway, with a receipt of six hundred and 
Rye pounds a year. What you have had besides, I am 



BETTER TO THE EARL OF RODEN, 383 

sure I cannot say; but supposing you to have had only 
the one office, you and your father have received, from 
that office alone, eighty-five thousand six hundred and 
thirty-two ponnds;" and you yourself now receive, at 
least, and may receive for forty or fifty years longer (if 
the present system continue) three thousand five hun- 
dred and sixty-eight pounds a year. What your rela- 
tions have received and still receive, I have not, at pre- 
sent, the means of pointing out; but, my Lord, you tell 
us yourself that you once lived in the pursuit of nothing 
but pleasure. " Whether God have yet given you your 
share of griefs," I know not; but, I know well, that 
this miserable nation has been compelled to give you 
-your full share of money. I do know a man, my Lord, 
who has had much more than his due share of griefs. 
An innocent man, half flayed alive by the scourges of 
merciless Orangemen: and can I hear you, with every 
luxury upon earth at your command, supplied, too, by the 
sweat of the people; can I hear you complain of griefs, 
and not think of the sufferings of the half-murdered 
Byrne ! 

I am, my Lord, your most obedient and most hum- 
ble servant, WM. COBBETT, 



JAMES MYRES, 

The Publisher of this Book, intends in a short time, to 
put to press, several catholic works of real merit. 
Owing to the high price which they are now sold at, 
their circulation is very limited, they shall be sold thirty 
per cent, lower. 

J. M. has for sale, a choice selection of Catholic 
Books at the most reduced prices. 



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